


Unfinished Business

by loveandallthat



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 16:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4442681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandallthat/pseuds/loveandallthat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin accidentally casts a spell to bring back Arthur, to settle his unfinished business.  Its range is slightly broader than expected.  Merlin/Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business

**Author's Note:**

> This took me so long to write. A lot of it was me practicing "show don’t tell" and trying to stick to a third person limited point of view, so please let me know how I did on those especially.
> 
> Thanks to [dolleye](http://dolleye.tumblr.com/), who helped incredibly even though she never watched Merlin, because that’s how she is. And this story wouldn’t exist without the encouragement of [inthedreamatorium](http://inthedreamatorium.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I don't think there's anything especially off-putting in this fic, but I still put things in the end notes anyway just in case.

Merlin had been living for fifteen hundred years since Arthur had stopped when everything changed.

 

Most of that time had been spent very old, because somehow even his own face reminded him of Arthur in ways he did not want to be reminded.  It seemed so dumb; it was _his_ face.

 

But the truth was, his time with Arthur had shaped his entire personality, his life, his being.  Nothing in Ealdor, not his family nor his friends nor his magic, nobody else he had ever known defined him like Arthur did, maybe even himself.  It was a terrible thought, unhealthy almost undeniably, but one that he had come to terms with over the more than a millennium without Arthur.  Maybe that time could have been seen as him learning who he was alone and not as a servant to a master, and in the past century it really had been.

 

But of course that all goes out the window when he feels it, when he just _knows._ Arthur is back.

 

\---

Merlin had pretty much gotten the hang of using magic to hide himself wherever he pleases, and to get what he needs to live.  Usually he’d done so by staying at least in villages somewhere, for the sake of not going completely mad being left alone too long, but he had done the latter as well, including the going mad part.

 

Well, the going mad part was first, he supposed.  Arthur was dead and he didn’t want to talk to anyone, so he didn’t.  He left, never returning to Camelot, and instead walked to small villages where he was unknown, and then found himself walking right past and living in uninhabited areas instead.  It was surprising to him how quickly it made him borderline insane, just to be by himself for a few months, and walking into a village to look for a conversation with a stranger felt like one of the lowest points of his life.

 

He found a balance then, living on outskirts, just enough conversation to keep himself sane but not too much that he had to remember where he came from or get so close to anyone ever again.  It took a while for people to realize the strange reclusive old man with no family had survived a suspiciously long time, and Merlin quickly learned how to time his exits accordingly.  He could have aged more smoothly and stayed longer.  Or, well, he _technically_ could have.

 

It still wasn’t a real option.

 

The weirdest decision he had ever made had been in December of 2013, when he had decided that he’d seen enough of England that he had to go somewhere else, and somehow found himself in America of all places.  And like everyone else, more specifically, California.

 

It was his big symbolic “I’m over Arthur and done waiting for him to come back” gesture.  Fifteen hundred years seemed like long enough to hang around uncomfortably close to the same area, as it developed and changed, so he left.  It amazed him how easy it was to stop doing something he had been doing for half a century.  He could just use his magic-forced passport and the money he had obtained mostly-legally and get on a plane with a few of his belongings, and then he was just where he wanted to be.

 

Teleporting seemed a bit flashy, and besides, he had not perfected it, considering he never had any place to be anyway.

 

So he packed up one suitcase–his needs were not so material–and took an early morning flight to Los Angeles, marveling at the many differences in the world since the time he refers to as his real life.  As opposed to this, what was it?  A waiting period?

 

The night before, he found himself, not unusually, dreaming of Arthur.  Tragically, this one was more of a memory of the day he died, Arthur’s eyes losing their energy and Merlin’s glowing gold, a whispered, “no, you can’t leave,” and a yelled, “you’re not finished yet; the world still needs you; I still need you.”  He woke up crying, of course, but wiped his face and got on with it.

 

He had never flown before, and couldn’t believe how cramped everything was.  He was too awkward for such small spaces.  Merlin was pretty sure he’d personally bumped into every single person on this flight.  How do people do this so often?

 

Merlin had been feeling off for the past week or so, though, and thought that this may be at least part of why he was having so much trouble with flying.  He’d gotten used to all sorts of public transportation as times had changed, and him, more slowly, with them.

 

It was just this sense of impending _something_ that he couldn’t get over.  Like a storm was coming.

 

Was it because he was leaving?  This was the thought that had haunted his exit, that maybe he was meant to stay in England, and was ruining everything by going to America.  Ruining what, he didn’t know.

 

He comforted himself with thoughts that he might be able to take trips back yearly, or maybe a few times a year.  It was not like if something was going to happen, he had to be there at the exact moment anyway, he reassured himself.

 

The flight was long, and he couldn’t sleep as well as everyone around himself, but it was over before he went crazy.  Walking into a huge and overcrowded airport, overtired and uncertain, was somehow a thousand times worse despite being a thousand times shorter than the flight.

 

He had already procured himself a place to stay and a job as a professor at a small community college in the Los Angeles area, a college that after some _convincing_ had hired him from his resume and without even seeing his face.

 

Merlin had managed to pack everything he owned into one small bag to carry on the plane and one suitcase, so he followed the other members of his flight mindlessly hoping that they were all going to claim their bags as well.  It seemed logical enough for him to count on it, and he honestly wasn’t sure that he would be able to find it himself past the strange fogginess that had overtaken his brain after he exited the plane.  Luckily that really had been where they were headed, and he recognized his bag both due to the amount of tags tied to it and the sheer fact that he could _feel_ that it was his.

 

Going outside and flagging down a cab was much easier than he thought it would be; he had heard that it would be smarter to call for one but, to be honest, he didn’t want to. Although there were barely fewer words involved in this scenario, somehow it was enough to make Merlin feel better. This transition was not rough for any reasons having anything to do with being afraid of what he would find, but was just a worry, incredibly irrationally, that he was leaving something behind, though he'd searched for so many years and never found even a sign.

 

He felt sluggish the entire ride to his apartment.  It had taken him a while to explain to the cab driver where to go, and because of that, of course, the man thought that he could take advantage of Merlin by driving the long way.  Merlin noticed immediately, but even correcting the man seemed like the hardest thing in the world to do.  Somehow it seemed easier to slightly alter the course of the vehicle so that it went the correct way, which he did, and each time he could hear the man make a confused noise before shrugging it off.  As though he was dumb enough that he believed that he was just taking the best route on autopilot.

 

Then again, that appropriately described how Merlin knew where he was going in this unfamiliar city.  Some combination of having wandered most of his life, having spent all of his time staring at maps of his future home before he made his decision, and something else.

 

He let the cabbie make a few unwise turns, but then started to pipe up when it bordered on ridiculous, and when he decided that it seemed innocent enough to know something was up.  The few extra dollars were one thing, but he wasn’t going to be taken for a fool on his first day, no matter how exhausted and peculiar he felt.

 

The cab driver took offense, as most con artists tend to when people call them out.  It occured to Merlin that he too used to be a liar who felt offended by a lack of faith in him, but he maintained that it was a completely different situation.

 

Unfortunately, his guilt got the best of him, and he gave way too generous a tip to the cab driver, who, upon seeing it, jumped out to help Merlin with his bags.

 

Obviously it hadn’t been that generous of a tip, since the man just removed them from the trunk and dropped them next to the tree in front of Merlin’s new apartment, but it was the thought that counted.  Maybe.  Anyway, Merlin hadn’t expected him to carry them up the stairs and into the building; he wasn’t a mover.

 

Merlin shrugged and looked at his belongings.  Enough for someone in decent physical shape to carry up the entry stairs to an apartment building and drag over to an elevator, for example.  Merlin may have had the body of a sixty-year-old man, but he probably could have even managed it on his own.

 

However, of course, he made it a little easier on himself magically.  So it goes.

 

It seemed like everything was falling into place, and Merlin found himself excited to put his belongings away in the landlord provided furniture of the apartment – owning furniture would make him less able to move around freely, he reasoned – but of course, nothing went according to plan.

 

Because when he walked in, dropping his bags near the doorway to walk about the apartment and get a sense of the place, he entered his bedroom.

 

And that’s where he saw a sight he’d always known in the back of his mind he’d see again, but in the least expected way possible.

 

Arthur Pendragon was lying sprawled out in his bed, fully geared in the clothes and armor he’d died in.  And he was _breathing_.

\---

 

Merlin, understandably, panicked.  He left the room and walked back in, extremely suspicious that he was imagining things.  If he was, his imagination was doing a good job being consistent, because Arthur appeared to still be there.

 

What was the protocol for these kinds of things?  If someone comes back to life after over a millennium, do you let them sleep?  Merlin pondered this for a while, but eventually decided whether he let Arthur sleep or woke him up, the important factor was probably him being there during the waking up.  If it happened.  And that wasn’t a train of thought Merlin wanted to follow, although it would have seemed the most likely that a dead person would, well, remain that way.  The whole breathing thing was starting to convince him that waking up was the next likely step in this process.  And that when it happened, he should be there to prevent catastrophe.

 

Which was, of course, Merlin’s specialty.

 

This was evidenced by the fact that Merlin abandoned his unpacking, removed Arthur’s uncomfortable armor for him, brought a kitchen chair into the bedroom, sat in it, and immediately fell asleep.

 

He woke up to a confused and weak but surprisingly loud cry of, “Merlin!” and immediately fell to the ground. 

 

Arthur was awake.  _Arthur_ was awake.  Arthur was _awake._  Merlin had no idea what to do.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur repeated, and the man with that name wanted to cry with relief.  “Where am I?  And what on Earth are you wearing?”

 

Merlin couldn’t help it; he laughed.  Reflexively, he looked down at what he was wearing, trying to see it through the eyes of someone used to a completely different era.  That’s when he looked at his hands . . . the hands of a man fifty years younger than he’d been making himself for fifteen hundred years.  He couldn’t believe it.  He had unintentionally de-aged himself because of Arthur’s presence.

 

That was . . . new.  Later he’d have to try to age back, maybe.

 

“It’s really good to see you, Arthur,” he said thickly, leaning forward as if to be as close to him as possible at all times.

 

Arthur could have been looking around the room, which likely would have looked incredibly strange to someone unused to modern technology, but he hadn’t broken eye contact with Merlin.  It was overwhelming.

 

As it turned out, a lot of emotions that his nomadic lifestyle had allowed him to avoid were still there under the surface.  Unfortunately, he learned this by beginning to cry to an extent that he could no longer speak, and leaning his forehead against Arthur’s shoulder.  Arthur flinched but didn’t move away, and Merlin sort of composed himself.

 

“What on Earth?” he repeated.

 

“Um,” Merlin said, feeling suddenly sheepish as he sat up.  “Welcome back.”

 

“Back?” Arthur asked.  “Where’ve I been?”

 

Merlin laughed through his sadness, somehow.  That was such an incredibly Arthur thing to say.

 

“It’s a good thing you’re sitting,” Merlin muttered to himself.  Arthur just looked at him as if he was thinking something about how Merlin was just as weird in this strange place as he was in Camelot.

 

Arthur still appeared to be awaiting a response.

 

“Um.  Dead,” Merlin said.

 

“Sorry?” Arthur asked.

 

“You were dead, for a bit.”

 

“Dead . . . for a few minutes until I started breathing again?” Arthur asked.

 

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this after you’ve just, um, woken up,” Merlin realized, thinking aloud.

 

“I must have misheard you, Merlin.  Are you trying to tell a _king_ what would be best for him?”

 

“Technically no,” Merlin answered immediately, without thinking it through.

 

“What is going on here?  Where is here?” Arthur added.

 

“I promise I will tell you if you just get some more rest,” Merlin said desperately.

 

“It even smells strange here,” Arthur said, paying no mind.  “I’ve never been anywhere that smells like this.”  Merlin fidgeted slightly, leaning forward a little.  “And I know it’s not _me,_ because you still smell the same.”

 

“What?” Merlin asked incredulously.

 

Arthur seemed to suddenly realize what he had said.  “Obviously, I am not to be held responsible for anything I say in my current state.”

 

Merlin wanted to tease him mercilessly, falling immediately back into old habits, but there were more important things to worry about.

 

“If that’s the case, you should get more rest,” Merlin insisted, hoping that meant he had temporarily won.

 

Arthur gave him a look that said that he knew exactly what he was doing, which was unsurprising.  He probably did.  But Merlin just pushed down on Arthur’s shoulder until his head was resting on the pillow.  Arthur maintained suspicious eye contact the entire time he was being maneuvered, but otherwise let it happen.  He really did seem tired, to put up with this kind of treatment.

 

“Are you going to watch me sleep?” Arthur asked tiredly, with his eyes still closed.

 

“Maybe,” Merlin answered back honestly.

 

It was hard to tell, but it sounded like the next word out of Arthur’s mouth was, “Good.”

 

\---

 

Merlin was, actually, there when Arthur woke up.  He’d been too panicked to leave for more than thirty seconds at a time when absolutely necessary, and he didn’t even get bored of _looking._

 

With a soft moan, Arthur started to stir.  Then, suddenly, he seemed to remember the last time he’d woken up, because he sat right up, slightly unsteadily, and didn’t shake off the hand Merlin immediately rested on his shoulder.

 

“Am I well rested enough to for you to tell me what happened while I was out?” Arthur asked Merlin.

 

“Probably not,” Merlin answered.  “But, then again, neither am I.”

 

“You’re acting very strange,” Arthur accused.

 

“Yes,” Merlin agreed.

 

“And stalling.”

 

“That too.”

 

“Merlin.”  


“Arthur.”

 

“Really, what _are_ you wearing?” Arthur persisted, breaking the silence.

 

At the same time, Merlin blurted, “You were dead for fifteen hundred years.”

 

“I’m sorry?” Arthur said.  “I certainly heard you wrong.”

 

“Possibly not.”

 

“It sounded like you said I was dead for fifteen hundred years.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Not seconds?”

 

“Not seconds.”

 

“Minutes?”

 

“No.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Right.”

 

Arthur fainted.

 

When he came to again, he didn’t bother trying to sit up.

 

“You’re not going to tell me that I’ve missed another fifteen hundred years, are you?” Arthur asked weakly.

 

“No,” Merlin answered.  “Even if you had I might lie.”

 

“That is probably wise,” Arthur decided.

 

“Do you want me to explain it, or should we wait?” Merlin asked gently.

 

“Oh, we may as well let you get into your mad stories.  I know how you like to make things up,” Arthur said, like he was placating Merlin.  “Maybe we can start with how you lived for, what, fifteen hundred years, was it?”

 

“Magic?” Merlin said hesitantly.

 

Arthur’s eyes widened.

 

“Good God,” he said.  “I remember that.  You’re the wizard.”

 

“Well.  Yes,” Merlin replied.

 

Arthur closed his eyes again.  “So can all wizards just live forever, then?”

 

“I don’t really know,” Merlin admitted.  “I think I, well.  I must have done something different than other people.”

 

“You mean you’re better at it.”

 

“In a manner of speaking.”

 

“So then Gaius isn’t . . . Morgana . . . Everyone.  Gwen,” Arthur realized.

 

“Everyone is gone,” Merlin confirmed quietly.  “I’m sorry.”  Arthur didn’t respond.

 

“Gaius and Gwen stayed in Camelot, and Gwen was a wonderful queen,” Merlin continued.  “And Morgana.  I’m sorry.  She was my friend too for a time, but I had to, you know I had to.”

 

Arthur put his hand over his head.

 

“She killed Gwaine before I got to her,” Merlin added.  “Everyone who made it through the war, though, they lived good long lives.”

 

“And I was dead,” Arthur deadpanned.

 

“Yes,” Merlin answered unsteadily.

 

“And you just stayed alive for fifteen hundred years, alone.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I’m sorry?” Merlin asked.

 

“Did you just keep yourself alive because you realized you could?”

 

“Oh,” Merlin said quietly.  “I was waiting for you.”

 

“What made you think I would come back?”

 

“Well, you did, obviously,” Merlin pointed out.

 

“Yes, to this very strange place with strange clothing, although I am reasonably sure what I’m wearing is mine.”

 

“It is,” Merlin confirmed.  “You were in it when I got here.”

 

“Don’t you mean when I got here?”

 

“Well, probably both,” Merlin pointed out, and Arthur rolled his eyes.  “You were here when I got here.  I just moved in here.

 

“And where is ‘here’?”

 

“Maybe we’ll start with a tour of the flat–sorry, apartment–and then we’ll move onto twenty-first century geography.”

 

Arthur passed over the flat/apartment comments briefly, but.  “Twenty-first century,” he groaned.

 

\---

 

Merlin did indeed give Arthur the full tour, teaching him every unpacked new technology as it came along.  The indoor plumbing was an obvious necessity, and he also gave a very brief introduction to electricity which basically was nothing but lightbulbs, and then he insisted that Arthur lie back down and offered to get him something to eat.

 

Merlin surreptitiously made a call for food, and answered the door before the bell rang, as he accepted the most normal food he could think to order, which mostly consisted of soup and bread.

 

“That was fast,” Arthur remarked.  “Your apparent servant is better than mine, I must say.”

 

Merlin snorted.  “No servant could be as good as yours,” he said, instead of trying to distance himself from that title.  “Incidentally, that is what I have.  No servant.  They have people who deliver food to you now.”

 

“Really?  I suppose that makes sense.  In whatever crazy world you’ve transported me to.”

 

“Arthur, do you really think I would transport you to another world?”

 

“What do I know about wizards?  They do all sorts of things.  The magic makes them mad.”

 

Merlin was a little hurt.  “You can’t really believe that.  You _know_ me.  Yes you were missing a detail, but you still know me better than anyone else, even anyone who knew about my magic.”

 

“You mean Gaius?”

 

“Yes, Gaius is an example.”

 

“Who else knew?”

 

“Eat your soup.”

 

“How many people did you tell before me?” Arthur demanded.

 

“Technically, Gaius just figured it out himself.  I didn’t really go around telling people.”

 

“Will must have known, since he covered for you,” Arthur continued, ignoring Merlin.  “You and Gwen were friends before she and I were, so she probably knew too.  Gwaine was there for you and not for me, so I imagine you told him.”

 

Merlin felt suddenly guilty.  “No, actually, Gwaine never knew.  And Gwen didn’t find out until after I told you.  Um, Mordred, but that’s obvious since he’s the one who told Morgana.  And Lancelot,” he said quickly.

 

“Lancelot?  Really?”

 

“I didn’t tell him!”  Merlin protested.  “He found out too.”

 

“How did I miss this?”

 

“If I were in a nice mood, I might say you had other things to worry about.”

 

Arthur looked Merlin straight in the eye for a full minute.

 

“So Gwen did find out, then?”

 

“In the end.  She was happier about it than you were, though.”

 

“Sorry that your betrayal was less painful to her than to me,” Arthur replied almost immediately.

 

“I thought you were over that?”

 

“I just thought there was more trust between us, that’s all.  You could probably tell that I looked to your opinion and help for everything.  And when you said you couldn’t fight with me in the end, and I didn’t know why . . . I just wish you had felt like you could tell me.”

 

“You know why I didn’t want to put you in that position.”

 

Arthur looked at him, eyes wide.  “You’re still saying that, fifteen hundred supposed years later.  It’s ridiculous to believe that you honestly were only looking out for me.  Especially when you had so much more at stake.”

 

“Well you and magic didn’t always have the best relationship.”

 

“Excuses, excuses,” Arthur said, but he appeared somewhat placated nonetheless.  “Forgive me if it’s hard to believe that someone was more concerned about _my feelings_ if I had to decide whether or not to put him to death.”

 

“That really was my concern, though.  Well, I was a little selfish, I guess,” Merlin admitted.  “Because it was terrifying to imagine you looking at me any differently.”

 

“That is still mostly about me,” Arthur pointed out.

 

“Clearly I was a better servant than you said, then,” Merlin replied, but he could feel his face heating.

 

“Still terrible at chores, though, even with the magic.”

 

“Don’t worry, I’ve had plenty of time to practice.”

 

“Yes, because in _this_ dream, I have awakened after fifteen hundred years of being dead, stuck in this very odd bed in these very strange quarters.”

 

Merlin was surprised.  “I thought you’d grown used to the idea,” he said.  “No, wait, nobody could grow used to that idea.  Maybe just stop thinking about it.  Watch some tele—read a book or something.”

 

Arthur narrowed his eyes.  “No, I think I’ll just rest again,” he said.  Merlin was immediately suspicious, but also pretty sure that there was nothing in the bedroom or bathroom that would be dangerous to be left alone with.

 

“Shall I leave, then?”

 

“I’m sure you’re very busy doing whatever it is people do now.  I’m going to see if going to sleep wakes me up from this dream.”

 

“It’s worth a try,” Merlin answered, instead of pressing the issue.  Still a little nervous, he left the room, pulling the door almost closed for a semblance of privacy.

 

He figured that now was the best time to unpack at least everything that went in the main room, and went about doing so.  After about an hour, he was done, and it felt like Arthur was being much too quiet.

 

When he couldn’t take it anymore and pushed the door open to check, Arthur was staring out the window, seemingly in a daze. 

 

“I figured you wouldn’t last very long,” Arthur said, without having even slightly turned to check if Merlin was there.  Merlin almost wanted to sneak back out to see if he could make Arthur feel foolish, but that seemed unnecessarily cruel and definitely not worth it.

 

“It was at least an hour,” Merlin defended, walking into the room fully.

 

“These buildings,” Arthur said, as Merlin went to stand next to him at the window.  “I can’t even believe them.”

 

“We’ve, um, come a long way.  Are you convinced you’re not dreaming yet?” Merlin asked, trying to sound casual.

 

“Not completely, but I have decided I may as well play along if I am,” Arthur answered.

 

“I guess that will have to do.”

 

Arthur turned to look at Merlin, and stared a little.

 

“Yes?” Merlin said eventually.  He wasn’t uncomfortable; in fact he was reveling in it, which was probably more the problem.

 

“You look exactly the same,” Arthur answered, barely loudly enough to be heard.

 

“You do too,” Merlin replied.

 

Arthur lifted his hand halfway toward the top half of Merlin’s body.  Merlin had no idea what he had intended to do, but then the hand was dropping and Arthur’s gaze returned to the window.

 

\---

 

It was a good thing that Merlin had gotten to his new apartment a few weeks early for his job, because it turned out to take quite some time to acclimate Arthur to this world, which was expected.  Strangely what seemed to shock him the most was not the new technology, but Merlin’s familiarity with it and the ease with which he used it.  Well, Merlin had to admit that made sense.  The last thing Arthur remembered, Merlin should be just as clueless as he was.

 

He was made even more frustrated then, every time that Merlin tried to demonstrate something to him.  Arthur had gotten the hang and tired quickly of television, a fact that amused Merlin.  He had been, of course, astonished for quite some time.  But Merlin had tried to separate it into pictures, then moving pictures, then recorded sounds, then movies – trying to basically condense history in order.  That was made a little more difficult considering that they did not exist in isolation (no matter how much it seemed like that when he was with Arthur.)

 

Merlin had tried to get Arthur the least different of today’s clothes, such that if Arthur went out he would not immediately be noticed as an outsider.  It had worked when they’d gone out yesterday.

 

The problem was Arthur.

 

Well, no, that was unfair.  The problem was the situation that Arthur had found himself in, something that nobody would likely be able to handle properly, whatever that might mean.

 

Arthur was doing surprisingly well, for everything that had happened.  Merlin still sometimes thought he was in denial, but usually he would go along with whatever what was happening.

 

However, the time that Merlin had taken Arthur out to eat had been somewhat of a debacle.

 

They went at an off-time, because although Arthur had never had a problem with people, there were a lot of other factors that would be a part of this adventure. 

 

Everyone was acting normal, and it wasn’t like restaurants were a foreign concept to Arthur, so this could have seemed like a stylized version.  Merlin had insisted on looking over the menu first, something that Arthur had complained about and then been a little happy with when he mispronounced half of it.  (Merlin could have sworn it was the least offensive restaurant in the area.)

 

It was a simple oversight, really, but they had just not realized that it would be too much.  The small differences were indeed just that, but the simple things – people on their phones, the cars constantly passing by – must have piled on, because Merlin had taken one look at Arthur’s face and tried to get him out of there.

 

He may have been underestimating him, though, because Arthur insisted they stay and finish the meal, which he did not seem hungry enough to eat and which Merlin ordered for him in a panic.

 

It was possible that Arthur was handling it fine (as well as anyone could), and Merlin was the one overreacting.  Maybe.

 

“I am fine, Merlin,” Arthur hissed across the table, after the waitress left with their orders.  This was a pretty clear indicator that Merlin was hiding nothing.  To be fair, he had always had trouble hiding things from Arthur.  Well, except the magic, and Arthur was still not over that.

 

“Right, of course, me too,” Merlin answered.  Arthur sighed.

 

“Maybe you can finally start telling me about what you’ve been doing, instead of the world history lessons.”

 

“You care about what I’ve been up to?” Merlin asked, honestly surprised.  Arthur gave him a strange look.

 

“Is that why you haven’t said anything?  You thought I wouldn’t be interested?”

 

“Well, what’s interesting about my life without yours?”

 

“Magic, for one,” Arthur said quietly.  “You could start at the point at which I found out about that, and maybe continue.”

 

“That wasn’t exactly the best day of my life.”

 

“Mine either,” Arthur pointed out.

 

“It was the last day of your life!” Merlin yelled, loud enough to attract notice.

 

“That is not helping us keep attention off ourselves,” Arthur pointed out.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“So?”

 

“Right, I’ll continue.”

 

“Start with who knew before me,” Arthur ordered.

 

“Still as bossy as ever,” Merlin said, though his brain substituted “jealous.”

 

“Still as annoying as ever,” Arthur responded immediately.

 

“In Ealdor it was just Will and my mother . . .”

 

“Your mother knew?” Arthur interrupted.

 

“How could my mother not know?”

 

“How could I not know?”

 

“You really are a clotpole,” Merlin said.

 

“Don’t tell me that’s a real word now,” Arthur threatened.  Merlin laughed.

 

“Of course not.  _Anyway,_ then Gaius found out when I got to the castle.  Kilgharrah knew already, of course . . . The Great Dragon,” Merlin clarified, at the confused frown on Arthur’s face.

 

“The dragon I slayed?”

 

“Well,” Merlin started awkwardly.  “The dragon I convinced you that you slayed.”

 

Arthur groaned.  “Of course.”

 

“I might have ordered him to leave,” Merlin confessed.

 

“You’re not a Dragonlord,” Arthur argued.  “Balinor was the last one, and it’s supposed to be passed down from father to son, and–oh.”

 

Merlin nodded.  Arthur reached out his hand and swung it at the side of Merlin’s head, but it was so gentle it could barely be called a tap much less a smack.

  
“What is the matter with you?  You lost your father that day and didn’t tell me?”

 

“Well I couldn’t have you knowing I was the last Dragonlord, could I?”

 

“For the love of–you know what, just continue.”

 

“Lancelot noticed that I helped out when he was fighting the griffin.”  Arthur still looked bothered by that one, Merlin noticed.  “A lot of people who I had to stop from causing trouble found out in the process, I guess, they’re not important.  Mordred knew from when he was in the castle when he was young.”

 

“Oh, good, the man who killed me knew before I did.  No, no, it’s fine, you couldn’t have known.”

 

“Um,” Merlin answered.

 

“You knew he was going to kill me and you let him become a knight?  Excellent.”

 

“Technically you let him become a knight.  Tell me, what would you have said if I’d told you it was prophesized that he would kill you?”

 

“If you had honestly believed it, I would have believed you,” Arthur said, quietly but steadily.  Merlin believed him immediately.

 

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, before he decided to say it.  Arthur just bit his lip to keep from talking.  “I should have let you in on so much more.”

 

“You shouldered so much alone,” Arthur said.  “I never know whether to thank you or ask why you didn’t trust me.”

 

“I trusted you so much,” Merlin said.

 

“I know,” Arthur said.  “I trust you, too.  Still, however many years into the future.”

 

Looking into Arthur’s open face for too long made Merlin uncomfortable, so he went on.

 

“Freya knew, but of course, she was pretty magical herself.”

 

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

 

“I loved her,” Merlin confessed.  “She was there for me after you died, well, sort of.  She still might have your sword.”

 

“I’m sorry, what?”

 

“Well, she still lives in the lake by where Camelot used to be, and has the sword that I took from Gwen’s father and had forged in dragonsbreath for you.  I really don’t see what part of this is strange or surprising to you,” Merlin joked.

 

“Was that the sword in the stone?” Arthur asked.  “How many things in my life did you magically change, exactly?”

 

“Quite a few,” Merlin admitted.  “If there was a problem we should just assume that I solved it with magic and maybe hid some of it from you.  To be fair, it is a servant’s job to help his master avoid trouble.”

 

Of course, that was when the waitress brought their food, and although it wasn’t the worst thing she could have heard from their conversation, it was also not great.  Arthur seemed to take notice of Merlin’s extremely red face.

 

“Right, servants are less common these days,” he said.  “I thought you were just trying to get out of your promise to serve me for life.”

 

“Does that still apply if you died?”

 

“Well I appear to be alive now,” Arthur mused.

 

Merlin couldn’t help but grin.  “After a really, really long time.”

 

Arthur looked up at him.  “You’re such a girl.”

 

“That’s sexist,” Merlin responded automatically.

 

“Sorry, what?”

 

“Nothing.  We’ll talk about gender equality later.”

 

“What will we talk about now?  How strange the flavors are in this meal?”

 

“We could, but I thought you wanted me to get on with the story.  Do you like it?”

 

“The food, or the story of your life?”

 

“Either.”

 

“They’re both adequate.”

 

“After Freya, I managed to keep it mostly quiet for a while.  Gwaine never knew, and he still trusted me so much,” Merlin trailed off.

 

“OK, not to repeat myself, but _I_ trusted you so much, and you didn’t tell me.”

 

“Do you have any idea how much I wanted to?” Merlin asked.

 

“When you finally did, it seemed like it, I suppose.”

 

“You suppose.”

 

“It was hard to tell with all the crying.”

 

“Yes, well, to be fair you were in a lot of pain.”

 

“Very funny,” Arthur answered sarcastically.

 

“I wish it were.”

 

“Well, it’s nice to know I wasn’t the _last_ to know,” Arthur said casually.

 

“You probably were after Morgana, though, since Mordred told her.”

 

“Well, I killed him for it,” Arthur pointed out.

 

“I am pretty sure that you killed him for killing you,” Merlin argued.

 

“Well what did you kill Morgana for, then?”

 

“I was trying to stop her from killing me, or you, and this is a bad conversation to have in a restaurant.”

 

“Well, I’m done with this food.  We could leave,” Arthur suggested.

 

“I didn’t even tell you the parts of the story that you weren’t there for,” Merlin protested.

  
“I thought you wanted to leave.  Besides, you said that was fifteen hundred years.”

 

“Fine, fine,” Merlin answered, and threw more than enough money to cover their bill down on the table.  He could have worried a little more about his spending habits, since he tended to prefer nomadism to holding down a steady job, but he had worked enough recently that it wasn’t at the top of his priority list.

 

Arthur stared a little at the money on the table, as he did most things that were drastically different in this time period.  Then again, it wasn’t like Merlin was completely accustomed to American currency either, although it was less strange to him.  He jumped ahead of Arthur to hold the door for him, partly out of a habit he had thought was long forgotten, but partly out of a desire to keep him comfortable.  It couldn’t be called doting, exactly, but well…

 

They walked back in relative silence, not wanting to try to speak above the crowd, and, at least on Merlin’s end, feeling somewhat exposed by their previous conversation.  He had thought that telling Arthur about his magic would be the last secret he kept from him, but it had woven its way into so many of their previous moments together that it seemed almost like their friendship was based on lies.

 

It made Merlin incredibly uncomfortable, and he hoped that this life would be the chance to redo things, and to start on honest ground.  Thinking of it like that was terrifying, though.  Arthur had magically appeared, and who was to say he couldn’t magically disappear?  Or there was always the looming threat that Arthur would age while Merlin’s age was still determinable by his own will.  And then what would he do?  Wait, assuming Arthur might come back again?  It sounded preposterous, especially given the unlikelihood of what had already transpired.

 

Frighteningly, Merlin realized this might be leading up to the true end of his life.  Arthur glanced sideways at him the instant he had that thought, like he knew, like he could read his mind.

 

By that time, though, they were entering the building, and Merlin couldn’t continue being lost in his own thoughts.  Except strangely, Arthur was putting the key into the lock of Merlin’s apartment and Merlin had no idea how or when he had gotten ahold of the key, but suddenly Merlin was seated on the couch with a glass of water and Arthur was on the armchair next to it, saying nothing.

 

Merlin took a very loud and obvious deep breath.

 

“Better?” Arthur asked casually.

 

“Not much,” Merlin said honestly.  “Yes, I’m fine,” he amended.

 

“Good thing we prepared what to do if I panicked,” Arthur joked.  Merlin glared at him with absolutely no heat behind it. 

  
“It all just sort of . . . hit me,” Merlin explained.

 

“The fact that if I’m magically back there has to be a reason, and you finding me is obviously part of it, and there are probably other forces involved?” Arthur suggested.

 

“Well, yes.  You’ve thought about this?”

 

“Of course.  Why wouldn’t I?”

 

“I thought you were in denial.”

 

“I am,” Arthur said, unashamed.  “But even if this is a dream or a trick, it’d be terribly boring not to try to figure it out.”

 

“And you say I’m odd,” Merlin muttered, shaking his head.  Arthur laughed.

 

“If you didn’t think about this already, I’m going to say that I have every right.”

 

“That’s fair,” Merlin said.  He set his glass of water down on the coffee table.  Arthur picked it up and put a coaster under it, and Merlin raised an eyebrow.

 

“Clearly TV has had a strange influence on you,” he said.

 

“Apparently,” Arthur agreed.  “You know, if this really is some sort of magic-induced dream, then I or whoever is causing this have quite the imagination.”

 

“You wish,” Merlin answered.

 

And then the ground started shaking.

 

\---

 

The integrity of their building stayed intact; they were not in an area that is innocent of earthquakes, and from that standpoint, this situation was no different.

 

However, this was nothing to do with tectonic plates, despite what the television playing in the background might have been saying.  No, Merlin knew that to not be the case, because down at ground level was their old friend Mordred, arms raised above his head, and eyes glowing gold.

 

“Is that,” Arthur started to ask.

 

“I guess it wasn’t just you,” Merlin breathed.  After a few seconds of remaining there, frozen, he yanked open the front door and started to run down the stairs.

 

“Wait–Merlin!” Arthur yelled, following.

 

“Stay there,” Merlin insisted, and Arthur laughed.

 

“Still with the jokes,” he answered, not slowing in his stride at all.

 

They reached the ground floor at the same time, but Merlin stopped and stared, unsure of the next best step.  Arthur appeared to have no such qualms, as he ran straight for Mordred and tackled him to the ground.

 

“Arthur!” Merlin yelled, surprised.  Obviously there was magic here, and that was the man who’d killed Arthur, and he was so willing to rush in, unarmed.  And Mordred looked ready to take advantage of that fact as soon as he had recovered from the shock of being knocked to the ground. 

 

Merlin panicked, and his hand was out before he had made a conscious decision, and then Mordred was out cold.

 

Arthur stood up.  “I had him,” he insisted.

 

“Of course,” Merlin said amiably.  “Um,” he started.  “Now what?”

 

“I might not be qualified to make that decision,” Arthur pointed out.  “I’m not familiar with the future.”  
  
“It’s not the future; it’s the present,” Merlin answered immediately.  “And I’ve never had to make decisions like this.  That was always your job!”

 

“I thought that I was just the figurehead to the decisions you made behind the scenes,” Arthur said, which was unfortunately fair and immediately made Merlin feel guilty again.  “Wait, I didn’t mean that.  Neither of us can say we made the best decisions in the past.  But we have no choice this time.”

 

Merlin sighed.  “Fine.  Let’s bring him up to the apartment and decide when he wakes up.”

 

“Seriously?” Arthur asked.  “Fine.  Better than leaving him here,” he added, as a lot of people were walking past and giving the three of them strange looks.  He put one of Mordred’s arms around his shoulders and waited for Merlin to get on the other side.

 

They managed to get Mordred up to the apartment, although the stairs were certainly not a fun part of the experience.  Merlin had previously questioned why Arthur came back fit as a fiddle after having been dead for so long, but now he regretted looking that gift horse in the mouth.

 

Once inside, they were back to being at a loss.  They dropped him onto the couch, and then both kind of stared at him, glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes. 

 

“This isn’t much better,” Merlin pointed out unnecessarily.

 

“No kidding, Merlin,” Arthur said, sounding much more like himself than he had since the whole reincarnation thing. 

  
It made Merlin stand up straighter and give him a serious, appraising look.

 

“Something wrong with my face?” Arthur asked, after the staring had gone on for probably way too long.

 

“No more than usual,” Merlin replied, but it was just a wasted comment at this point.  Even if they both acted like nothing had changed, everything was different.  Something in Arthur’s expression and his lack of even a token protest made Merlin think they were probably on the same page about this.

 

Then Mordred groaned from the couch, and they both panicked, shocked out of the moment.

 

“Should we bind his hands?” Arthur suggests, recovering first.

 

“Yes!”  Merlin latches onto the idea.  He digs around in one of his boxes and pulls out a roll of duct tape.

 

“I don’t see how that’s going to fit around his wrists–oh,” Arthur said, as Merlin got to work.

 

“I can’t believe I forgot to explain _tape_ ,” Merlin muttered as he finished.  “He can get me water from a refrigerator but _tape_ is a surprise.”  Arthur just looked at him like he was being ridiculous.

 

“What do we do now?” is all he said, though.

 

\---

 

An hour later, Mordred was tied upright to a dining chair, showing signs of waking up.  Arthur seemed remarkably relaxed about the situation, sitting on the couch watching Merlin pace back and forth until he heard a groan from the other side of the room.  Merlin looked like he had no idea what to do, so Arthur stood up and blocked his frantic run toward Mordred.  Merlin didn’t notice until too late, of course, and smacked into Arthur’s back.

 

“Really, Merlin?” Arthur asked, obviously not waiting for an answer as he strode over to Mordred and grabbed his face and jerked it up so it was pointed at Arthur’s.  Mordred rolled his neck to the limited degree that he could in that position, his eyes opening slowly.

 

“Good, you’re awake,” Arthur said.

 

Mordred muttered something indecipherable.

 

“Well, sort of,” Merlin amended from behind Arthur.  Arthur half-turned, as if he would have been glaring at Merlin if it were smart to take his eyes off of Mordred.

 

Arthur turned back to Mordred fully and shook him.  “What are you doing here?” he asked, all business.

 

“Like I’d tell you,” Mordred answered, immediately petulant.

 

“He doesn’t know,” Merlin said, on a hunch.

 

“Why do you think that?” Arthur asked.

 

“I was guessing based on how you came back,” Merlin hissed.

 

“Yeah, but who cared about him enough for him to appear in their bed–um,” Arthur said.

 

“Wait,” Merlin started.  “You think this was fated?”

 

Arthur went a bit red.  “I didn’t say that.”

 

“You definitely implied it,” Merlin insisted.

 

“We have other things to worry about,” Arthur said, avoiding eye contact.  Merlin made a mental note to remember that.

 

Arthur looked like he knew exactly what Merlin was thinking, but that was his usual expression lately.  It was often like that before, too, but somehow the knowledge of magic had trumped the fifteen hundred years of not seeing each other, because this look was more impressive and piercing than ever.  Merlin felt laid bare.  More when Arthur drew his eyes up to Merlin’s, then down his face slowly.

 

“Later,” Arthur reiterated.  Merlin nodded.  They both focused their attention back on Mordred.  He had finally started to truly come around, and he seemed mad.  Maybe even because he was their captive and they were ignoring him.  Merlin snorted.  He should have been pleased to be ignored.

 

“What’s the matter?” Arthur asked.  “Killing me once wasn’t enough?”

 

Merlin almost laughed at that, somehow.  It was like that wasn’t his life anymore, like he wasn’t the Merlin who he was when Arthur died.  True, for much longer than he had known Arthur, he had been someone who lived without him, but that felt just as much like a dream if not more. 

 

Arthur turned to Merlin and they exchanged a glance, like they were each making sure the other was all right with the comment.  It was very weird, and like they were both looking back on their ethereal pasts together.

 

Mordred cleared his throat.  “To be fair,” he said hoarsely, “it doesn’t seem to have taken.”

 

Merlin groaned.  Jokes, really?  “How long have you been here?” Merlin asked, instead of complaining aloud.  He could have patted himself on the back for asking a question that was actually useful.

 

It still seemed like Mordred was (understandably) hesitant to answer their questions, but this one must have seemed safe.  “Almost a month,” he grumbled.

 

Arthur and Merlin looked at each other yet again.  That was when Arthur had shown up.  Something about that made this situation more and less strange.  If they were both here, then likely an external force had caused it.  However, if they were both there . . . who else was?

 

“Seen any of our other friends?” Arthur asked, forced-casually.  Mordred seemed to have completely come around, and his eyes narrowed as he seemed to realize he was already being asked something important.

 

“No,” Mordred answered steadily.  “Have you?” he added.

 

“We will ask the questions,” Arthur said, but at the same time as Merlin said, “No.”

 

“Oops,” Merlin said.

 

“Honestly, Merlin, interrogation is not your strong suit.”

 

“Sometimes it is,” Merlin argued.

 

“Now is not the time to joke, Merlin,” Arthur said.  Merlin laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of any of his previous interrogations being considered a joke.

 

After hearing about everything that happened in Camelot, Arthur probably knew Merlin’s ruthless side too.  He had probably even seen it back then and just been trying not to focus on it, Merlin figured.  Intentionally keeping himself unaware.  Maybe Merlin had an overactive imagination, but he liked thinking that some part of Arthur had always known.

 

Arthur was biting his lip.  When Merlin turned and accidentally bumped his shoulder, he released it to continue his questioning.

 

“What were you doing until now?” he asked Mordred, voice tight.

 

Mordred looked away from Arthur, who immediately grabbed his chin to drag his face back forward.

 

It felt like Merlin should leave, since, well, these two had technically killed each other, and had unfinished business.  But the idea of leaving Arthur alone with Mordred again was laughable.  Like he hadn’t just spent hundreds of years regretting every chance he had to kill Mordred, and even chances he had never been afforded.  It was Merlin’s greatest regret, and yet, he doesn’t think he would do it any differently if he had another chance.  The thought scared him.

 

Mordred remained silent.

 

“Answer the question,” Merlin said, unintentionally bringing out a slightly more commanding presence than the other parties in the room may have been expecting.  Mordred’s eyes widened.

 

“Nothing,” he replied.  “Nothing important, anyway.”

 

“Elaborate,” Merlin commanded.

 

“I suddenly came to in the middle of nowhere, and just barely managed to figure out this weird new world enough to do a spell to see if I could find anyone I knew.”

 

“Who did you find?” Arthur asked.

 

“You, obviously.”  Something about Mordred’s tone of voice seemed cagey.

 

“Who _else_ ,” Merlin prompted

 

“No one,” Mordred persisted.

 

“So you got the opportunity to do a locator spell, knowing that you were fifteen hundred years into the future, and decided the first thing you would do is try to find me?” Arthur asked, disbelievingly.

 

“Yes,” Mordred insisted.  Merlin’s eyes flared gold.  “I looked for Kara,” Mordred admitted, and then immediately seemed surprised at himself.  Arthur was surprised, too.  Did magic really work like that?

 

Arthur pulled at the collar of his shirt, like he suddenly remembered that he wasn’t used to what people wear these days, and ran a hand through his hair.  “And?” he prompted.

 

“And you were closer,” Mordred answered harshly.  Arthur’s eyes widened, but he didn’t step back.

 

“Trying to win her favor, first?” Merlin suggested.

 

“I couldn’t wait,” Mordred corrected.  Merlin stood straighter and narrowed his eyes, leaning in closer and trying to break Mordred’s spirit with the force of his glare.  It didn’t appear to be working, but he had been answering their questions, which was a significant start.

 

“I’m glad I’m so important to you,” Arthur said, seemingly broken of his shock.

 

“It also would have been good to tell Kara that I had successfully killed you,” Mordred added.  “It still will,” he muttered under his breath.  Merlin glanced at him quickly, and the tape tightened around him immediately.  Arthur took a step back, still unused to it.  Merlin had been trying for the past two weeks to act like a person who didn’t have magic, at least most of the time.

 

Mordred seemed at least somewhat affected by the look as well.  It was possible that his own magic was offering the slightest resistance to Merlin’s apparent powers of suggestion.  Arthur kept giving Merlin significant glances, which he was currently ignoring.

 

Suddenly, Arthur grabbed Merlin’s upper arm and dragged him so that whispering would not be overheard by Mordred.

 

“Why doesn’t he just magic himself out?” Arthur hissed.

 

“It’s possible that I tied him up with a little magic,” Merlin admitted.  “So that would be impossible,” he explained further.

 

“You can do that?” Arthur asked, incredulous.

 

“Well, I had never done it until now, but apparently, yes.”

 

Arthur just kept staring at him.

 

“What?” Merlin asked, self-consciously.

 

“You just now _happened_ to realize that you can bind someone else’s magic, and it’s not a surprise to you?”

 

“Oh,” Merlin said.  “I guess my powers have surprised me for so long that I just got used to pushing the boundaries.  I didn’t think about it.”

 

“You didn’t think about it,” Arthur repeated, deadpan.

 

“Not really,” Merlin agreed.

 

“How powerful are you?”

 

“Supposedly very,” Merlin said.  “I guess I didn’t think about that very much, either.”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“There was a lot going on.”

 

“Yes, I imagine it’s easy to be so busy you don’t recognize yourself as the most powerful wizard there is.”

 

“Did you recognize yourself as a great king?” Merlin asked instead, trying to turn the conversation around on Arthur.

 

“There’s no measure for that,” Arthur dismissed.

 

“Or for magical power,” Merlin pointed out.

 

“I think it’s a little easier to measure,” Arthur insisted.

 

“Are you really doing this right now?” Mordred interrupted.

 

“Shut up,” Merlin and Arthur said, and then glared at each other for agreeing during their argument.

 

Arthur sighed.  “Great, what next?” he asked tiredly.

 

“Well we can’t keep him here tied up,” Merlin answers.  “Or, we shouldn’t.  And we can’t let him go . . .”

 

“Things were much easier when I had a dungeon at my disposal.”

 

“Not always for me,” Merlin pointed out.

 

“Reminiscing instead of deciding my fate, how typical,” Mordred lamented, but nobody paid him any attention. 

 

“Can _you_ find other people we might know?” Arthur asked suddenly.

 

Merlin thought about this.  Finding people was easy enough; he had learned that spell a while ago, although he didn’t always even need a spell to do something once he set his mind to it.  He knew he was going to end up doing it, but to dredge up memories of all the people whom he had lost, people Arthur had thought he would never see again, sounded terrible.  Arthur had known when he was dying and expected everyone to live on without him.  What would be worse now, to know that he was among the few who were inexplicably left, or to see them again in this unfamiliar world?

 

He sighed.  “Yes, I can.”

 

“And you didn’t think of it until now?”

 

Merlin hadn’t.  He had assumed that it had something to do with his strong ties to Arthur.  It seemed easier to accept one random resurrection than several, anyway.  Knowing that three of the people who had most contributed to Arthur’s demise were here as well made it feel cheapened somehow, but Merlin wasn’t going to say that.

 

He paused for too long, so Arthur sighed and continued.  “Can’t you just magic a prison like the kind we used to have, since you’re so talented?”  There was sarcasm in his tone, but Merlin still felt a little bit flattered.

 

“I guess I can,” Merlin answered, surprised at himself.

 

“Wait, really?”

 

As an answer, Merlin raised a hand to the currently unused corner of the living room, and slowly a small cell began to take form.  The style was just like at Camelot, as though Merlin had paid no attention to current prison designs, but Mordred and Arthur would probably appreciate it.  Well, not Mordred, since they were about to put him in there.

 

“Somehow I doubt that’s going to hold him,” Arthur said, but he still sounded a little shocked.

 

“Obviously if I can make duct tape take away magic, I can make the cell do that,” Merlin answered.

 

“Oh, of course.”

 

Merlin looked at Mordred, still attached to the chair, and took a deep breath.  He tried to pull the chair backwards into the cell, and managed to move it about an inch.  He looked up at Arthur, who rolled his eyes and joined him on one side, recognized the problem immediately, and then completely took over.

 

When the door was closed, Merlin waved his hand haphazardly, and suddenly Mordred’s limbs were free from the chair.

 

It was about six in the evening, though.  Merlin almost wished that he could go to bed, except that he had been sleeping on the couch and letting Arthur have his bed (of course) and that would mean sleeping in the same room as his rapidly constructed prison, which . . . he realized he would have to do anyway.  He looked at Arthur, who appeared to be thinking something along the same lines.

 

“What do we do now?”

 

Well, at least similar lines.

 

“Watch television?” Merlin joked.

 

Arthur considered it, though, and then sat down on the couch and grabbed the remote.  Merlin felt the adrenaline from his afternoon leaving him in one go, and plopped himself down next to Arthur, who still had a habit of changing channels too rapidly to get involved in anything.  Merlin had kind of gotten used to it.

 

The air was thick with the awkwardness of everything that Merlin had confessed in the diner, things they had both silently agreed they would not talk about while Mordred was jailed in their living room, all the promises Arthur had heard about the continued exposition he would finally hear.

 

Mordred appeared to have come to some sort of decision that it would be best to be quiet in this situation, and was just watching them.  Merlin felt a little bit unsettled by that, but Arthur didn’t seem to be noticing.  Or maybe he was just a generally calmer person, Merlin thought, which was probably a fair comparison.

 

Eventually they deemed it late enough to go to bed, awkwardly shoving a few random food choices into the temporary prison cell and turning off all the lights.  When Arthur walked into Merlin’s bedroom and Merlin set up the couch for another night of tossing and turning, Mordred apparently decided that was the perfect time to finally start talking.

 

“Are you seriously going to keep me here and sleep right next to me?” he demanded, starting off a tirade that Merlin mostly ignored out of exhaustion.

 

“Probably,” he mumbled.

 

“You think it’s a good idea to sleep next to a prisoner?”  Mordred proved his point by throwing an apple out between the bars and directly at Merlin, who unconsciously stopped it with magic and let it land neatly on the coffee table.

 

Unfortunately, though, it opened up the complaint floodgates, and Mordred continued ranting and banging around.  It took fifteen minutes for Merlin to realize he was never getting any sleep this way, ten minutes to decide it would be cruel to tie Mordred back down (Merlin had, of course, lived to see enough social change to recognize that times had changed), and five minutes to decide that sleeping in his own bed was his right, even if Arthur was also in there.

  
Preparing himself to be yelled at for waking Arthur up, especially in order to sleep next to him, Merlin stood up and grabbed the pillow and blanked he was already using.  He walked into his own room to see Arthur with the duvet already wrapped around himself, seemingly deeply asleep.  There was enough room on one side of the bed that Merlin managed to drop his pillow and crawl in carefully, draping the blanket over himself.  Arthur didn’t even move.  Merlin honestly couldn’t figure out if it would be better to wake him up to avoid surprising him in the morning, or to let him sleep and hope for the best.  The latter won, out of sleepiness more than anything else.

 

Predictably, he woke up to being shoved off the bed.

 

\---

 

Shockingly, Merlin won the argument about sleeping arrangements.  It was decided that it was unwise to sleep near prisoners, as much as they didn’t want to admit that Mordred was right, especially about this.  Somehow this argument managed to sway Arthur, though, and he didn’t even seem terribly put off.  When Merlin seriously thought about it, he realized that Arthur had not been sleeping all that well anyway, and used to come out of the room pretty early in the morning to verify that Merlin was still there, before even getting himself properly ready to face the day.  He still wore a strange combination of modern clothing that Merlin had gotten him to be somewhat close to what Arthur might be used to, which also went for his underwear choices, of course.  Merlin and Arthur had stopped being shy around each other fifteen hundred years ago, but it was still strange to go from not seeing him at all to this.

 

If Merlin really thought about it, he sometimes suspected that seeing him made Arthur feel more comfortable and reassured him that there was at least one constant in this unfamiliar place.  He tried to remind himself that was silly, although there was no dismissing their importance to each other anymore, so he tended to let himself imagine that this was the case.

 

Arthur was at the table, eating fruit and meat for breakfast, still not ready to go along with the current trend of processed breakfast foods.  Merlin agreed with that choice, and found himself going back a little bit to the old eating habits he had gotten used to in Camelot.

 

Of course they gave some to Mordred, good prison wardens that they were, and then Arthur decided he couldn’t take being in this apartment for one more minute.  Merlin was a little nervous about just leaving, but somehow Arthur’s faith in his abilities transferred a little bit to him as well, and he agreed to take Arthur to a clothing store, and possibly a nearby park.  Staying out as long as possible seemed to be the goal, but he still didn’t want to overwhelm Arthur.  Or himself, apparently, considering he was the one who had freaked out the previous day.

 

When they got to the store, they must have looked incredibly awkward.  Arthur was unused to all of these choices, usually having clothing made for him and also having no idea what his own size was.  Merlin felt awkward being the one in charge when he and Arthur were together, at least overtly in charge.  He was used to controlling situations from behind the scenes, knowing more than Arthur did about the shenanigans that were going on but never being called out on it.  Being the one in the know now was significantly weirder.

 

It only took around two minutes for a cute blonde salesgirl to notice that the seemed to have no idea what they were doing, and to come over and ask if they needed help.  Merlin looked to Arthur without thinking, but couldn’t quite read the expression on his face, so he spoke up.

 

“My friend’s wardrobe could use a bit of a refresher,” he said, trying to be vague enough to not be lying while also getting the point across.

 

“I see,” she answered, as though Arthur’s current outfit evidenced that fact.  Merlin took a small bit of offense to that, having picked it out, and Arthur seemed offended too, since he had appeared to have liked it.  “Why don’t you just get into a dressing room, and I’ll pick some things out.  What size do you normally wear?”

 

“Um,” Arthur answered.

 

“I see that, too,” she said.  Now they were definitely offended.  But Arthur still allowed himself to be steered to the dressing rooms.  The shop was mostly empty, since it was so early in the morning, and there were a few employees there taking care of organizing and manning the cash register, so it seemed their salesgirl was going to focus only on them today.  Great.

 

She returned faster than Merlin expected, carrying a bunch of dark-colored clothing and handing it to Arthur.  “These are a few wardrobe staple pieces, things that I think every guy should have in his closet.”  Merlin could see a few different pairs of jeans and some button down shirts, among other things.  “Try this and this on first, together,” the girl, Amy according to her nametag, insisted.

 

Merlin smirked to himself, realizing that Arthur would have to do up the buttons himself, except that Arthur came out with the jeans on and the shirt completely unbuttoned, opened to a classic t-shirt underneath.  He held his arms out as if it were perfectly normal to not button your own shirt, and Amy looked at them, eyes widening slightly.

 

There was really nothing else to do in this situation, so Merlin reached out and buttoned the shirt quickly, stopping near the top.  Arthur looked at him like he was about to accuse him of improper shirt buttoning technique, but Amy was already nodding and pushing Arthur toward the mirror.

 

Merlin bit his lip.  Of course, modern clothes looked great on Arthur, maybe even better than the best clothes he wore when he was king. 

 

“He looks great, right?” Amy asked.

 

“Um, yeah,” Merlin answered incredibly awkwardly.  Arthur noticed, of course, but was still turning from side to side to check himself out.  It was inevitably strange for him to see himself in these kinds of clothes, although he had gotten pretty accustomed to seeing them on other people.

 

The rest of the shopping expedition continued on more or less like that, until there was a large pile of clothing that Arthur had decided would suit him.  He came out of the dressing room in the final shirt, a crisp red button down (and Merlin had thought he was done with his duties, apparently not.) 

 

The color looked amazing on Arthur.  Merlin stopped in his tracks, hands halfway reaching for the undone shirt.  Arthur’s eyes narrowed.

 

“What?” he asked Merlin.

 

Snapping himself out of it, Merlin leaned in and started buttoning.  “Most people these days button their own shirts,” he said quietly, sure that Arthur could hear them, as close as they currently were.

 

“Well, I’m not most people or ‘these days’,” Arthur answered, whispering as well and making Merlin shiver slightly.

 

Amy seemed incredibly interested in this development, and Merlin already knew that they were prone to people making snap judgments about the nature of their relationship.  At this point he had stopped correcting people, although a few days ago he had explained the entirety of the current debate about LGBT social issues, something that Arthur had found interesting, especially from a political standpoint, which was the one he usually used to view the world.

 

Merlin backed up and let Arthur look at himself in the mirror.

 

“That color looks great on you,” Amy said, and Merlin was irrationally mad at the understatement.

 

“It’s all right,” Arthur conceded.  He stepped back into the dressing room, and was back in the clothes he’d come in quite quickly.  When he opened the door, Merlin saw two piles of clothes, one significantly larger than the other, unfolded and not hung up.

 

Arthur followed Merlin’s gaze.  “Which ones should I get, then?” he asked, as if he remembered that the only money that they had was all Merlin’s.

 

“Which ones did you like?” Merlin returned easily.

 

“Those,” Arthur answered, indicating the larger pile.  “But we can’t get all of them.”

 

“Well, why not?” Merlin insisted, already grabbing the larger pile.  Amy held out her arms for it, so he deposited it into her waiting hands and she took it up to the register.

 

“That’s way too much,” Arthur hissed when she was out of earshot.

 

Merlin ignored him and noticed that the red shirt was on the floor, forgotten.  He waited until Arthur stormed off to the checkout line, as though he would be able to purchase the clothes, and bent down to grab it.  He stalked up to the register, trying to look casual while holding such an obvious item, and handed it to Amy, who had efficiently scanned most of the merchandise already.  Arthur was pointedly looking away, apparently fed up with Merlin’s antics.

 

When she was done scanning everything, Amy rattled off the total (which did sound quite high to Merlin, but having been alive for a long time had seriously made Merlin quite wealthy, and his savings would probably barely even notice.  She turned to Arthur, then, and asked how he would be paying.  Arthur looked to Merlin awkwardly.

 

Since he already had his wallet out, Merlin just handed over his credit card.  Amy appeared surprised, then smiled slightly, before she accepted the card and swiped it, and Merlin signed the receipt.  He was clearly not helping them appear to be just friends by paying for Arthur’s clothes, and he was probably not helping Arthur by not getting him any money or credit of his own, but there were way more pressing matters to worry about. 

 

When they finally made their way out of the store, Merlin felt a palpable sense of relief.  The store was much more crowded than when they left it, although he hadn’t noticed at the time, too distracted by looking at all of the clothes Arthur tried on and feeling really awkward around Amy.

 

He led them to the park, agreeing suddenly with Arthur’s desire to not be home with Mordred.  There was a path where people liked to walk, run, or bike, and a few benches scattered throughout, and since they had so many bags, Merlin sat down at one of those.  They were quite near an ice cream vendor, and Merlin suddenly decided he could use some, the second that they had gotten settled.

 

“I’m going to go get some ice cream,” he told Arthur.

 

“Sure,” Arthur said, like he didn’t know why Merlin was informing him of this.

 

“Do you want any?” Merlin prompted, like Arthur was slow.

 

“Oh.  No,” Arthur said.  Merlin knew that Arthur liked it, had eaten all of the ice cream in the freezer back at Merlin’s apartment, and couldn’t wrap his head around this fully.

 

“Why not?” he pestered.

 

“I just don’t want any.”

 

“You’re going to be upset when I have some and you don’t,” Merlin said, but he walked to the stand to get himself some anyway.  When he came back, eating his scoop of chocolate on a cone, Arthur kept staring at it.

 

“I told you,” Merlin said, and Arthur blinked at him for a few seconds, shaking his head and looking away.

 

They watched the people enjoying the park for a while, Arthur somewhat amused at the fact that people have to intentionally run for exercise, even though Merlin keeps reminding him that it’s not that conceptually different from training to be a knight, for example.

 

Arthur turned back to Merlin all of a sudden.  “So what did you do after I was killed?”

 

Merlin flailed at the question and almost dropped the last bite of his ice cream cone, sticking it into his mouth instead and chewing slowly in order to avoid the question for as long as possible.

 

“Surprisingly enough,” he started, “I was not really happy about that.”

 

Arthur ducked his head.  “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

 

“What did you mean, then?”

 

“I meant after some time passed.”

 

“I still wasn’t exactly happy about it.”

 

“No, I mean—obviously you didn’t go around being unhappy and messing around for fifteen hundred years,” Arthur burst out finally.

 

“Um,” Merlin replied awkwardly.

 

Arthur just stared incredulously.  “I used to joke that your life had no meaning without me, but I really _was_ just joking.”

 

“I didn’t say _that_ ,” Merlin insisted, because he hadn’t, even though it was true.  “When your best friend literally dies in your arms, though, it tends to have a lasting effect.

 

Arthur still looked like he doesn’t believe him, and opens his mouth to say something, then closes it.  Instead, he said, “I was your king, not your best friend.”

 

Merlin just gave him a look.  “First of all, it’s up to me who’s my best friend.  And second, you were both.  Are both.”

 

“And what, you’re still my best-friend-slash-servant fifteen hundred years later?”

 

“You never said I was your best friend,” Merlin pointed out, feeling suddenly warm.

 

“Really, Merlin, you’re so daft.  I think I have to fire you from your servant duties.  I already gave you half a bed.”

 

“That’s my bed,” Merlin insisted, then stopped himself.  “Wait, if you’re no king and I’m no servant, where does that leave us?”

 

“So daft,” Arthur whispered.  Merlin had to lean in a bit and watch him closely just to catch the words, then pulled back, affronted.

 

“I told you,” Merlin said, trying to cover the awkwardness he was feeling, “I was in England up until almost the exact moment that you showed up here.  I made money working whatever jobs I felt like, helped with a little magic, and moving around to avoid suspicion, changing my age sometimes.  Although, I usually stayed old,” he confessed, still nervous.

 

“Wait, why?  Isn’t that inconvenient?”

 

“It just . . . felt wrong.”

 

“Why did you change back?  Wait, don’t tell me, it ‘felt right’?”

 

“Hilarious,” Merlin deadpanned.  “But, yes.”

 

“Did nothing interesting happen while I was dead?”

 

“Were you dead?”

 

“That’s not the point.”

 

“If people becoming suspicious of me is interesting, then yes, interesting things happened while you were otherwise occupied.”

 

“That actually is interesting,” Arthur said, “And you’ll have to tell me those stories at some point.”

 

“We’re going back to Mordred?” Merlin asked, regretfully.

 

“We’re going back to Mordred,” Arthur agreed.

 

On the way back, they stopped to get a few choices for lunch.  Arthur had started to branch out a little bit, and they went to a local Chinese restaurant.  It was quite different from what he was used to, but Arthur seemed eternally bored without a war to fight, and was much more open to trying new things because of it.

 

Mordred seemed used to it as well, which was interesting to Merlin.  If Mordred hadn’t killed Arthur, it might actually be interesting to learn about what kinds of things that he got up to while he was finding himself in this new world as well.  Actually, that was something that they still needed to do.  It would probably be mostly up to Merlin and his magic, but he doubted that Arthur would just leave him alone while he did so.  Maybe when everyone was full of food.

 

It was awkward in unexpected ways, not knowing if they should just act normal and eat in the kitchen or the living room, or keep hiding and do something ridiculous like eating in the bedroom.  Of course the silliness of that made itself apparent to them pretty quickly, and Merlin and Arthur sat down next to each other on the couch, food balanced on their lap, an extra meal slid to Mordred based on Merlin’s memory of the kinds of foods he used to like to eat a half century ago.

 

He still eyed it suspiciously, though, until Merlin stared him down and he decided it was safer to eat it.  Who would poison their own prisoner, anyway, Merlin wanted to ask.

 

Way too soon, they were all done eating.

 

“Oh, damn,” Merlin said, like that was a natural response to the end of a meal.  Not that any of the other people in his apartment would know whether or not that was true.

 

Arthur, though, seemed to be in possession of enough intellect to notice the abnormality, because he asked what the problem was.

 

“I start work tomorrow,” Merlin said.

 

“Wait, work?” Mordred asked, surprising both of them.  It occurred to Merlin that Mordred probably didn’t know that he’d actually been alive these past years, instead of having just come back like he and Arthur had.  Interesting.

 

They still ignored him.

 

“I think I can manage without you, Merlin,” Arthur said.  It sounded like he was trying to joke, but Merlin thought he imagined that he came up a little bit short.

 

“Because you were such a beloved prince before I came along,” Merlin joked.

 

“First of all, yes, I was, and secondly, it doesn’t matter, seeing as I am now neither a prince nor a king, that wouldn’t even matter.”

 

“Fair point.”

 

“How was Gwen as queen, by the way?” Arthur asked.  “You said she did well, but what was Camelot like under her reign?”

 

“She was amazing,” Merlin breathed, closing his eyes to the memory.  “I left, but I paid attention.  She was so kind.  So happy when I told her that the person with magic in the final battle, in our whole lives together, was me.  I couldn’t believe it.  She tried so hard to make Camelot a place that was accepting of magic.  I can’t thank her enough, even now.”

 

“So why leave?  Couldn’t the hero of the final battle have helped convince everyone?”

 

“I didn’t want to leave.  I tried so hard to stay.  But that’s the problem; I wasn’t a hero.  I had one goal and I failed.”  Merlin’s voice broke.

 

“That’s not on you.”

 

“It _is_ on me,” Merlin whispered.  “I knew the whole time that he was going to kill you.  I heard the prophecy while he was just a child, but I couldn’t kill him then, couldn’t kill him when he came back.  I could have saved you so many times.”

 

“You did save me so many times.”

 

“Not when it mattered the most.”

 

Arthur pressed his lips together and stared at Merlin, who looked at him unblinkingly.  It went on for what might have seemed like too long, but neither seemed able to look away.

 

Mordred coughed, and they immediately startled out of their daze.  Merlin immediately glared at him.

 

“You knew this was going to happen the whole time?” Mordred asked finally, as though it were forced out of him and he could no longer hold it back.  Arthur stepped back.

 

Merlin, on the other hand, stepped forward.

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

Mordred paused, fidgeting.  He answered with, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

 

“You were innocent,” Merlin stated simply.

 

Arthur scoffed from where he was standing.  “Typical Merlin.”  He didn’t seem angry, mostly just unable to keep his eyes off of Merlin and Mordred, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

 

“Yes, well,” Merlin said awkwardly.  “Tomorrow, then.  What’s the plan?”

 

Arthur shook his head, snapping himself out of it.  “I figured you would just go to work, and then perhaps come home.”

 

“I meant for you,” Merlin clarified unnecessarily.

 

“I won’t ruin your home while you’re away.”

 

“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”  Arthur prompted Merlin to continue.  “I’m worried you’ll be bored.  Well, not bored,” Merlin amended, noticing Arthur opening his mouth to say something.  “Unfulfilled?”

 

“Unfulfilled?”  Arthur repeated.  “Do you think I have been so fulfilled when you were here?”

 

“I didn’t mean—“ Merlin started, but Arthur interrupted.  
  
“I know what you meant, Merlin.”

 

“Right, of course.”

 

“We’ll have a lovely time,” Arthur added, reminding Merlin of the existence of Mordred.  It was a strange thought, Arthur and Merlin alone in the apartment.  Merlin had made sure there was enough food, things that Arthur would not need to heat up—expecting him to cook would have been ridiculous even back when he was used to the methodology—but it seemed like there was so much that could go wrong.  Not even with his apartment, since Merlin was not the type to be concerned with material possessions, but just with Arthur’s sanity and happiness.

 

Merlin didn’t think it was a reach to guess that Arthur knew that was exactly what Merlin was thinking about.  Well, they didn’t even spend much time apart from each other when they were in Camelot, but the past few weeks had found them essentially never parting. 

 

The trust between them was still there, the bond of master and servant flaming up every once in a while, but occasionally also the camaraderie of soldiers on a battlefield, when things had seemed tough, and very often the banter of best friends.

 

It was weird, but now that there were no true secrets between them and Merlin had nothing to hide anymore, he never felt like he needed a minute to himself.  It just . . . didn’t occur to him.  And sure, going off into the world on his own was commonplace for him by now, but it did seem to be unnecessary.  He had no ties to these people; he could abandon them if he so chose, and not even feel guilty.  Merlin didn’t need the money, and he wasn’t exactly an irreplaceable history professor, considering he still had to teach from a book like any other professor.  And yet, Merlin felt that he still had a reason to go.  It seemed to be incredibly important. 

 

Maybe Merlin really did feel the need to distance himself from Arthur, and just couldn’t recognize it, only feeling it on a subconscious level.  Stranger things had happened.

 

Merlin fell uncharacteristically silent, then, preparing his belongings for his first day, and Arthur was reading an actual physical newspaper that he had made Merlin buy for him, since he was nowhere near good enough with current technology to use a computer, although of course Merlin would have bought him one of those if asked to.  Hell, he’d have found a way to buy Microsoft itself if Arthur asked.  A newspaper seemed a hilarious request, and Merlin suddenly promised himself to start receiving one.  Or maybe several, just to diversify Arthur’s knowledge and exposure.

 

Feeling ridiculous but committed, Merlin pulled out his computer and began subscribing to papers.  As if he needed to suddenly tie himself down like this.  Of course Arthur noticed Merlin’s haste.  He was also just generally fascinated by computers, especially since Merlin regrettably failed to first teach him about computers themselves and then separately about the internet. 

 

So, of course, he was asked, “What are you doing?” as Arthur immediately slid over closer to him on the couch, from where he had been finishing his paper.

 

“Nothing exciting.  Work stuff.  You know.  Getting ready.”  Merlin turned the screen away.

 

“Right . . .” Arthur said dubiously.  Merlin was being way too obvious.  If Arthur were more in touch with the current society, he would absolutely be accusing Merlin of looking at porn right now, he figured. 

 

“I’m not acting shifty,” Merlin blurted, his ever-present smoothness around Arthur Pendragon continuing true to form.

 

“You’re looking at newspapers?” Mordred’s voice rang out from his cell.  Merlin whipped his head around to get a glimpse of Mordred leaning as far to one side as he could, craning his neck in the only way that would allow him to see the screen which Merlin had just hidden from Arthur.

 

Merlin felt his face heat up.  He looked at Arthur, who was wearing his ‘I’m waiting’ look, folding his arms for the full effect.  “I just thought you might like more newspapers.  Every day.”

 

Arthur relaxed his eyebrows.  “I probably would,” he hedged.

 

“Well, then, that’s settled, who’s hungry, I can go get dinner.”  Merlin clicked the final button indicating his surety that he wanted to subscribe to the third paper he’d been looking at, closed the computer, and walked hastily out of the apartment.

 

\---

 

When Merlin got back, bringing with him a random selection of Italian food, it was to his furniture rearranged in such a way as to allow Mordred to see the TV.

 

Arthur actually stood up upon his arrival.  “This isn’t what it looks like.”

 

“Right,” Merlin agreed.

 

 “It was just—all the complaining got on my nerves.”

 

“Of course.”  Merlin started opening containers and taking out plates, and Arthur stayed standing, leaning toward the kitchen almost as if he intended to go over and help, Merlin thought.

 

Nobody ever asked what Mordred liked, trying to somehow maintain the illusion of having a rightful prisoner even though neither Arthur nor Merlin now had any political authority, and this cell was housed in a small California apartment.  Merlin gave him no real dinnerware, either, just as much to maintain appearances as due to a real fear that Mordred might somehow be able to do something with them.

 

Somewhat surprisingly, both of the recently resurrected seemed to enjoy the food, or else Merlin had just waited too long to feed them, and isn’t that a strange thought?  Merlin was keeping these people alive.  Well, Mordred only because he was also keeping him locked up, since he had appeared to be doing just fine for himself without Merlin’s help, but there was still that _feeling_.  Merlin trusted Arthur, though.  Usually more as an “I trust you with my life and with any serious issues that arise” kind of trust, but he could probably trust him to sit alone in an apartment while Merlin teaches two classes.  Maybe.

 

He was still worrying about it when it became somewhat of a reasonable time to go to bed, and he had walked into his own room to get clothes to sleep in, when Arthur walked in and said something completely unexpected.

 

“I can take the couch, so you can sleep well for your first day.”

 

“I’m sorry?”  There was no way that Merlin had heard that right.

 

“You can sleep in your bed, and I’ll stay out there,” Arthur said haltingly.

 

Merlin was pretty much at a loss for words.  Although the previous night had been somewhat of a fluke, and the first chance Merlin had to sleep in his own new bed, he had still entertained it as the slightly less likely sleeping arrangement for that night, second to Arthur returning to Merlin’s room and Merlin toughing it out on the couch.  This scenario hadn’t even entered his mind as a possibility.

 

“Thank you?” he said, not sure if you could really thank someone for giving you your bed.  “But no, I don’t want you to have to do that.”

 

“Well you can’t go to your first day of work after a poor night’s sleep,” Arthur insisted.

 

“I sleep fine on the couch, and Mordred will probably be quiet this time.”  It was the first real mention that they’d shared last night.

 

“Merlin.”

 

“No, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

 

“It’s your home.”

 

“Arthur.”

 

“You’re sleeping in this bed tonight.”

 

“ _You’re_ sleeping in this bed tonight.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Fine.”

 

  1.   That was settled.  Sort of.



 

Getting ready for bed . . . together, was more awkward than anticipated, but smoothed by all the times that they had traveled together.  Most of it felt familiar, except that the times Arthur had slept in Merlin’s bed before, both last week and fifteen hundred years ago, Merlin had slept on the floor.  And the few times Merlin had fallen asleep in Arthur’s bed when he was supposed to be doing chores, well, those were another story altogether.

 

They managed to get into place with minimal incident, though, and as had always been the case, Merlin slept a little easier when Arthur was closer.

 

He woke up to Arthur still there, having turned over in bed to face him.  He looked at Arthur for a while, before finally standing up as gracefully as possible.  Which was not necessarily perfect, but Arthur didn’t so much as budge.

 

Merlin stepped into the shower with a vague hope that the steam would be able to clear his head, but did not find that to be the case.  When he stepped out and slowly got dressed, he still found his thoughts to be an uncomfortable combination of those of Arthur and those of Mordred.  He paused before opening the door, somehow unreasonably afraid to see Arthur awake, but took a deep breath and stepped through.

 

Arthur was still sleeping, but had rolled over into the space Merlin had vacated.  Merlin pressed his lips together, and picked up his wallet from the nightstand before exiting the room.

 

When he closed the door behind him, he realized that Mordred was awake and watching him, and only years of different styles of living calmed him enough to prevent him from startling visibly.  Mordred didn’t say anything, and Merlin couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound overly friendly or overly harsh, so he picked up his bags and decided to buy breakfast on the walk to work, just to save himself any awkwardness.

 

The history department at this college was small, since it was more focused on business, and Merlin therefore had only a few colleagues, but it felt like they all had equally commonplace names.  Merlin would have forgotten them immediately if he hadn’t written them down, although, to be fair, he had learned a few names in his time.

 

Teaching was actually something Merlin had found himself quite good at doing, and he didn’t need much thought to lead a lesson directly from a book.  Hopefully he was slightly more interesting than a professor who read directly from slides and showed a few videos, but even if not, he had always had a decent crop of reviews from the students.  Then again, this was the first time he was teaching so . . . young, at least physically, and there was a weird dichotomy in which the students seemed to respect him more and less at the same time.

 

There was also a little staring, unless Merlin was kidding himself.  Maybe by today’s standards he was more conventionally attractive, or maybe he just never paid any attention in the past.  Still, the reaction of others to his youthful appearance was fascinating.

 

Once he’d taught both of his classes—which were, of course, ten minutes apart and on opposite ends of the campus—he rushed back home, although he was at least trying to be casual.

 

When he was on his floor, he could hear Arthur and Mordred’s voices from down the hall, carrying all the way across the building, in the midst of an argument.  Merlin sighed.

 

When he got closer and was able to hear the words, he paused before opening the door.

 

“Why are you even doing this?”  Mordred was saying.  “Role reversal?  Cleaning Merlin’s quarters like he used to do yours?  You know he used to use magic, right?  If you let me out, I could—“

 

“That’s enough,” Arthur cut him off.  “I’m bored, and I’ll tidy if I want to.”

 

Merlin took in a deep breath through his nose.  How was this his life?  He opened the door.

 

“I was just,” Arthur said.

 

“Bored?  Tidying?  So I’ve heard.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Thanks,” Merlin added, awkwardly.

 

“How was work?” Arthur deflected.

 

“Boring, really,” Merlin answered honestly.  “There was a department meeting, but the whole group is small and boring.”

 

“Is that just a way to say that you can’t make friends with anybody at work?”

 

“I made enough friends at my first job to last me a lifetime, apparently.”

 

“Since when is one enough?” Arthur asked.  “Actually, since when are we friends?”

 

Merlin laughed, feeling better immediately.  “Right, of course.”

 

\---

 

That was about how the rest of the week passed, with Merlin working slightly different schedules depending on the day, and always turning down invitations to see his coworkers outside of actual working hours.  With few classes also came few office hours, and a routine was quickly started that involved a lot of spending time at home, but also quite a bit of going around the city with Arthur, who was adjusting somewhat quickly to the current world, the Merlin was still hesitant to expose him to too much technology.  Frankly he was still hesitant to expose himself to too much of it.

 

That Wednesday, though, Professor Something Boring (James Smith) tries very hard to invite himself to Merlin’s home, citing a need to check out his book collection and discuss the topics in their curricula which overlapped.  Merlin vehemently denied having any interesting books and suggested a local coffee shop as a great meeting place, making a mental note to keep his and Arthur’s activities separate from those of himself and his coworkers. 

 

It seemed to work, and they had a tolerably short meeting, and decent beverages, and Merlin found himself letting his guard down until he was at his front door and someone behind him cleared his throat.

 

“You left this at the shop,” James was saying, out of breath, holding out Merlin’s lesson plan, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t left anywhere.

 

“Thanks,” Merlin said, obviously not making any move to actually get in his apartment.  At best, someone would walk into the place and assume that Merlin was just into some extremely kinky things.  At worst, they’d notice the impossibility of a cell with plumbing being installed into an apartment without a landlord noticing.  Or rather, at worst . . .

 

  1.   There were a lot of ways for this to go wrong.



 

And it seemed like one of them was about to happen, when the door suddenly opened behind Merlin and Arthur was standing behind Merlin.

 

“Oh,” Arthur said, “You have company.  You know we’re not ready to have people over.”

 

James blinked back and forth between the two of them.  “I—I didn’t realize,” he stammered, backing away from the door.  “I am so sorry for intruding.  I’ll see you tomorrow at work, Merlin.  Nice to meet you, um.”

 

“Yes, nice to meet you, too,” Arthur replied, pulling Merlin inside and definitely intentionally ignoring the chance to introduce himself.

 

When the door was closed, Merlin turned to Arthur.  “You realize what he just thought right now?”

 

“Yes, Merlin, I’m not stupid; I watch Modern Family.”

 

Merlin put his head in his hands.  Seriously, what did he do to deserve this?

 

The question in his mind intensified when he looked at Mordred to see that he was gagged with a scarf.  He waved his hand and the scarf untied itself.

 

“I promised not to make any noise!” he protested immediately.

 

“Why would I believe you?” Arthur asked.

 

“Don’t you think it’s better for me here than in the actual police system?”

 

“Probably not, you could just magically escape the actual police system.”

 

  1.   Why?



 

\---

 

Thursday was just like the previous days, except that Arthur was awake when Merlin went to work, and Mordred was not.  Arthur sat in the kitchen while Merlin showered, and Merlin came out and made some semblance of a proper breakfast, knowing he would be just in time or late to his first class, but wanting to do this anyway.  Strangely, he came out to his bed already made, although he had noticed that Arthur tended to eventually get bored enough to do it, he was surprised to realize that Arthur woke up and straightened it out.

 

It occurred to him as even more strange when he served Arthur breakfast and got a thank you in return.  They ate in silence for a few minutes, pausing when they thought that they heard stirring of their remaining roommate waking up, and going back to their meal when they deemed it nothing to be concerned about.

 

Suddenly, Merlin couldn’t take it anymore.  “Why are you acting so unlike yourself?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Being polite to me, cleaning up around here, putting up with my decisions, sharing a bed with me?  You can’t say you would have done any of these things fifteen hundred years ago.”

 

“Fifteen hundred years ago I was a king, and you were my servant,” Arthur pointed out.

 

“I don’t think that just all goes away so easily.”

 

“You still think of yourself as my servant?”

 

“Not officially,” Merlin answered slowly, “But I still wish to serve you.”

 

“For how long?”

 

“As long as I shall live.”

 

“But what would I do if you changed your mind?”

 

Merlin looked directly into Arthur’s eyes.  “Do you really think I could?  Do you really think I _would_?”

 

“Maybe if you wanted to.  You have a lot going for you in this world.”  _A lot more than I do,_ Arthur didn’t say, but Merlin still somehow heard it.

 

“You will as well,” Merlin said certainly.  “Why else do you think you’ve come back now?”

 

Arthur seemed to be at a loss for words.

 

“I have to go,” Merlin excused himself, certainly late.

 

\---

 

Of course, James apologized immediately for disrupting him and his boyfriend, assumed that Merlin wanted to keep his situation on the “down low” (technically true, although the situation was slightly mistaken), and assured Merlin that he would not say anything.

 

It should have been awkward, but Merlin found that he just did not care.

 

His classes dragged longer than usual as well, and the office hours seemed to be even worse.  Even though he knew it was the whole point, it was weird to see students there.  Especially so early in the semester when essays had only been talked about and not even assigned, the only people who showed up were those with an inordinate amount of concern about their grades, who could be a handful to deal with at times.

 

When he returned home, his apartment door was busted right open and his blood ran cold.

 

Inside was quite possibly the worst thing he could have imagined.  Mordred was freed from his cell, Arthur had his back to a wall and was holding a kitchen knife, and—Morgana herself was there, obviously having broken in and let Mordred out.

 

“Oh good,” she said.  “Everyone is here.”

 

Merlin raised his hands at her immediately, but she raised hers at Arthur.  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.

 

“Back at you,” Merlin said, not taking his eyes off Morgana as he took a few long strides and got himself in front of Arthur.  “I beat you once and I can beat you again.”

 

“You’re old and out of touch, and I’ve gained all kinds of new knowledge,” Morgana said.  It was probably a hedge; there was no way that she could know what Merlin had been up to.  And she didn’t realize the sheer force of his natural talent, easily summoned whenever he may need it.  Like now, for instance.

 

Except, apparently not, because suddenly her arms were grabbed from behind and put behind her back.  By Mordred himself.

 

“Mordred!  What are you doing?”

 

“I’m not sure,” he answered.  “But I think I don’t want you to kill them.”

 

“What?” three voices questioned him.

 

“They have been keeping you prisoner!” Morgana spit.

 

“There was a reason that I went to them before I came to you, Morgana, and I think I have been reminded of it.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, gaining confidence, “But there was a reason you left, too.  Get in here!” she suddenly yelled.

 

Everyone waited, looking around, until suddenly a head poked around through the open door, and, hesitantly, Kara herself walked in.

 

“Kara,” Mordred breathed, releasing Morgana immediately.  Merlin kept himself between her and Arthur, and didn’t take his eyes off her even to watch the scene unfold.

 

He still heard the sounds of an embrace, presumably Mordred and Kara, and a lot of whispers that sounded like verification that everyone was really here.

 

“Let’s do it,” Morgana said.

 

“No,” Mordred said.  “Let’s leave.”  When Merlin allowed himself a glance, it appeared that they were locked in a staring contest.  Morgana, of course, was used to doing anything that Mordred asked, but this was something she never would have expected.  Somehow, it ended in him winning over Morgana with something in his eyes, and she walked over to him and Kara, waved her hand, and they were gone.

 

Merlin could, of course, find them, but it seemed like that would be a terrible idea, with Mordred so changeable and Morgana so strong.  Instead, he caught his breath while he heard Arthur drop the knife and slide down the wall onto the ground.

 

“Sorry I’m late?” said Merlin.

 

\---

 

It took a while for them to recover from the ordeal enough to even stand up and start to speak, but when they did, Merlin saw fit to order them a pizza.  Of course Arthur would be shocked at the general greasiness of the current food, but he had been growing quickly accustomed.  Merlin’s jokes about him getting fat may have instead just been premature rather than covering up his magic.

 

They ended up on the couch, watching TV, definitely not disproving Merlin’s theories about possible weight gain.  They manage to finish off the pizza between them, but Merlin can quickly feel his eyelids drooping.

 

“Now that Mordred is gone,” he spoke for the first time in a while, “I can take the couch and you can go back to the bed.”

 

Arthur still seemed displeased by this, but he didn’t say anything, so Merlin took it as agreement.

 

He quickly fell asleep to whatever was on the TV, too exhausted from the day’s activities to keep his eyes open, or even to have the wherewithal to change his clothes or clean anything up a bit.  He slept deeply and had strange dreams of the past, something that has never been uncommon but was now a nightly occurrence.

 

When he woke up, something registered as strange, but it was not within his immediate capabilities to figure out what it was.  At first he thought it might be simply the fact that he was on the couch, but that wasn’t strange enough, until he stretched his legs out and met resistance far too early, only to realize he had just pressed his foot up against the side of Arthur’s thigh.  Now waking up next to Arthur was no longer in and of itself unusual, so Merlin considered the fact that maybe it was the combination of the couch and not being alone.

 

That was when Merlin looked around more closely, and realized that the entire meal from the previous night had been cleaned up.  While he was asleep, Arthur had cleaned everything up, turned off the TV, and then made a conscious decision to sit back down on the couch and fall asleep.

  
Merlin could not fathom why.

  
OK, he had a lot of guesses, but each seemed more far-fetched than the last. 

 

He found himself wishing to stay in this moment until he was able to figure it out, but ultimately knowing that was a bad plan, since he had to get to work soon.  Getting ready as quickly and quietly as possible, he walked out the door to the sounds of someone in the living room waking up, without turning back to find out who it was.

 

Friday brought with it three discussion sessions, making it slightly more interactive and therefore more interesting.  It seemed to pass more quickly when students were doing at least some of the talking, although Merlin had to try to adjust his answers to the off-book questions so that they didn’t sound like he had been around when these events happened.  As much as any educator likes to know that students are interested, these kinds of things make Merlin wonder if he shouldn’t have chosen a different subject.

 

When the second discussion was over, the higher level class, Merlin felt partly tapped out but also a little bit better about people in general.  He didn’t take attendance in his discussions, although there seemed to be an overarching tendency to do so, but people still showed up to try to get better grades or out of genuine interest.

 

Upon arriving at home, Merlin realized that he still had a prison cell in his living room, and quickly went about returning it to normal.  It felt strange to have so much space in the room, and Merlin set about trying to rearrange the furniture again.  He was magically moving the couch, trying to decide where it looked better, when he heard laughter behind him and turned to look at Arthur.  He dropped the couch where it was, deeming it good enough.

 

“Just when I think I’m used to it,” Arthur muttered.

 

“The magic?” Merlin said, redundantly.

 

“I only ever saw you use it to fight, or to do grand, amazing things, back then.  I didn’t even have enough time to think about everything else.”

 

“When I first came to Camelot I used it a little too much, and Gaius is the one who reminded me not to get dependent,” Merlin explained.  “Even now I never really got out of the habit of using it sparingly.”

 

“I thought you were the best?” Arthur teased.

 

“I might have been, might still be. But if I’m going to live in this world, I want to do it at least close to normally.”

 

“I don’t think anything could make you normal, Merlin.”

 

Merlin smiled.  “I usually used magic for you, you know.  Sometimes to clean your armor, yes, but even to save your life.”

 

“I remember; you gave me the whole story.  I can’t believe you slowed time for me just to become my manservant.”

 

“I didn’t do it to be your servant; I just didn’t want you to die.”

 

“Even if I might have wanted you to?”

 

“I know you were a good person, even then,” Merlin said confidently.

 

“It’s strange when you say things like that.”

 

Merlin just shrugged.  “Do you think we should find Mordred and Morgana?”

 

“Can you?”

 

Merlin just looked at Arthur.

 

“Right, sorry.  I just . . . have a feeling that we don’t need to worry about it.”

 

“I was thinking the same thing.”

 

“But,” Arthur started, then paused.  “But, if they’re here, I’d like to know who else is here.”

 

“I think I can do that.  But, how are we going to do this?  Do you want to make a list?  What if we forget someone?”

 

“How could we forget someone?”

 

“Well, not a friend, but maybe someone we didn’t get along with and still wouldn’t get along with, and would like to know is here?” Merlin suggested.

 

“Right.  Too bad you can’t just use magic to check for anyone you knew from the time you came to Camelot to the time . . . you left.”  Although that was what Arthur said, he was still looking hopefully at Merlin.

  
“It’s magic, not a computer program,” Merlin snapped.  Arthur didn’t look offended, just like he was waiting for Merlin to realize he had no idea about either of those topics, really.  “Right,” Merlin said.  “Maybe I _could_ make it work that way.”  Merlin honestly hadn’t thought that he could, until the point that Arthur did, when he suddenly decided that he had to.

 

“What do you need?” Arthur said finally.

 

“If I do it right, I can probably just pinpoint them on a map,” Merlin answered.  “Although, if I do this many, I don’t know if I can write them down fast enough to know which one is which, if they all come to me at once.”

 

“You’ve never done this before?”

 

“Not with multiple people.  But I had never slowed time until I saved your life.”

 

Arthur looked at him seriously for a few seconds.  “A map,” he said, finally.  “Let’s go out.”

 

By that time it was getting close to dinnertime, and most restaurants would be crowded, but Arthur still seemed to want to get something to eat.  Trying to avoid crowds landed them at a restaurant that was slightly fancier than Merlin would have picked out for them together, but luckily Arthur’s tastes lent themselves to dressing decently, and Merlin was still in what he wore to work.

 

Mostly, what Merlin was thinking was that this was quite an ordeal for something that was supposed to be map shopping.  Arthur’s eyes rose at the prices, though, since he had started paying attention to what was considered expensive.

 

“Don’t look at the prices,” Merlin ordered.

 

“I may not really be used to things, but I’m pretty sure most people can’t spend this kind of money all the time,” Arthur said, not even trying to hide exactly what he had been doing.

 

“Most people haven’t had as much time to make money as I have,” Merlin answered.  “Don’t look at the prices.”

 

When the waiter got there, Merlin asked for a recommendation and then ordered something different, on a weird whim, thinking of a time when he had read that waiters are told to push the oldest food first.  Arthur just ordered something that was the same price as Merlin’s, to which Merlin just rolled his eyes.

 

“I do this because I want to,” Merlin said, when the silence started to get awkward.  “I don’t feel like I owe you anything as a servant.  It’s not because I think that you need me.  I was born to serve you, and I’m proud of that.  And you don’t need to feel guilty about it just because I’m better at it now than I was back then.”  He hoped he covered all of Arthur’s doubts in that, since it seemed unlikely that he would be doing that again.

 

“You were a pretty lousy servant,” Arthur said, but his shoulders relaxed.  “At least in all the traditional ways.  I think you went above and beyond, sometimes.”

 

“Really, I don’t think I did more than a servant is usually supposed to.  It’s more like you, the king who kept trying to sacrifice his life for his servant.”

 

Their food arrived, stopping what seemed like it was about to be a protest from Arthur.

 

“How is it?” Merlin asked, basically the second Arthur took a bite, so that Arthur had to give him a _look_.

 

By the time he was done, though, he seemed less tense, and just answered that it was really good, sounding surprised.  He nodded at Merlin’s in askance, to be polite.

 

“It’s good,” he answered.  “You want any?”  Merlin realized the awkwardness of the offer the second he made it, but had no way to fix that.  Arthur just reached over, though, and stabbed his fork through a bite.  Merlin had long ago accepted that whatever was his was Arthur’s as well, something Merlin had zero problem with.  But they were still crossing weird lines, eating at nice restaurants off each other’s plates.  Things that might have been weird enough before, when they could have been considered brothers in arms, but they were now just adding fire to any flames of their intense relationship.

 

This was probably a good example of a reason that they couldn’t decide on whether they were still servant and master, or good or best friends.  Most people their age wouldn’t clarify the “best” anyway, but there was something more to them that couldn’t be easily described.

 

Merlin was distracted from these thoughts by Arthur offering him some of his food in return.  What was this, a night to break down all the previous barriers and roles in their interactions?

 

He accepted the offer, because nothing would be more awkward in this situation than not.

 

“Of course yours is much better, and we will have to switch immediately,” Arthur said.  Merlin was lifting his plate to do so before he realized Arthur was joking.

 

“Relax, Merlin.”

 

Merlin immediately does so, apparently still somewhat at Arthur’s command.

 

Having already shared the details of his life post-Camelot, Merlin felt like there was really nothing for him to talk about in that regard; he had also given Arthur a lot of lessons on the current day and age and was pretty much left with scientific and technological advancements, both of which seemed like unusually heavy dinner conversation, so he left them alone and they sat in silence.

 

When they got the bill, Merlin just handed his card to the waiter without doing more than glancing at the prices, and Arthur scoffs notably, even though that was likely the exact kind of thing Arthur would have done, if he had maintained his power and wealth to this day (or, of course, just if he were born in these times.)

 

They hung around after the bill was returned, though, Arthur seemed to be stalling.  “So, what do we do if we find someone?” he asked.

 

“If it’s someone good, I guess we’ll go to them to see if they’re doing OK.  And if they’re someone we didn’t get along with, I guess we still go to them, to make sure they don’t do something wrong.”

 

“Then it doesn’t really matter who it is,” Arthur said.

 

“Well, not really.”

 

“What then?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean,” Arthur said, sounding heated, “What do we do when we’ve tracked down anyone else, and dealt with them?  What do _I_ do?”

 

“You were right the first time,” Merlin interrupted, “It’s ‘what do we do’.” 

 

Arthur started to say something, but Merlin was on a roll.  “I meant it; this is not an obligation.”

 

“If you can really stay alive forever,” Arthur went on, as if Merlin hadn’t spoken, “You’ll have to watch me die again.”

 

“I could be killed,” Merlin pointed out optimistically. 

 

“Yes, Merlin, thank you for that.  And, if not?”

 

“I can age normally, if I want to,” Merlin evaded.

 

“So, you’re saying you would die.  On purpose.”

 

“It’s not suicide,” Merlin sort of yelled.  Oops.  Arthur seemed to still be angry about the thought of this topic, but a little bit amused by the antics.

 

“It’s not,” he repeated.  “It would just be me finally doing what I probably should have a long time ago.  It’s living without avoiding . . . anything.”

 

“What if you die, and I come back, and you’re not here?” Arthur asked quietly.

 

Immediately, Merlin tensed.  “Don’t do that.  You can’t—please.”

 

“I’m sorry, but isn’t it apparently possible?”

 

“I’m going to figure this out,” Merlin decided suddenly.  “I will find out why you’re back, why Morgana, Mordred, and Kara are back, and anyone else we may find.  I will figure this out and we will know what to do and I will _never_ leave you.”

 

Arthur said nothing.  He sat there staring at Merlin for a long time, before backing his chair up and standing.  “We should buy a map.”

 

\---

 

They came home with a map, and a bunch of things from the convenience store that had caught Arthur’s attention, leaving Merlin powerless to any attempts to convince him not to buy them, his previous minimalistic tendencies out the window completely.

 

Merlin cleared off the table and opened up the huge map of the world, having decided to go for quantity over quality.  He took out a pen as well, holding it tightly.

 

“Ready?” he asked Arthur.

 

“I should be asking you that.”

 

Merlin looked back at him over his shoulder.  “Here goes nothing.”

 

It was, of course, not even close to nothing.  He had to close his eyes and concentrate, altering a traditional location spell that probably would have required something close to the one single person they were looking for.  Instead, he was looking for multiple people, limited to a time frame, and without objects, instead just with his own memories.

 

Somehow, though, he was able to do it.  When he came out of the trance he found himself in, there were pen marks on the map, four Xs in total.  Three of them were concentrated in a city not too far away from them, presumably Morgana, Mordred, and Kara were on their way out, and one was . . .

 

Arthur was staring at the map in confusion.  Merlin realized he had no idea what Arthur had been doing while he was doing the spell.

 

“There’s someone in our city,” Arthur breathed, and Merlin nodded.

 

Even though it was just a feeling, just a memory of a sense he had gotten while he was doing the spell, Merlin still spoke his suspicions.  “It’s Gwaine.”

 

\---

 

Arthur wondered if they should get a concentrated map of the city to use it to find Gwaine, but Merlin knew that it would be fine now that he was only looking for one person.  Although he was completely ready to go out right that minute, it seemed like it was a little bit late, and he was tired from the day and especially the spell.  It might be a better idea to go in the morning, too, just to have daylight to their advantage.

 

Then Merlin realized that he would be sleeping on the couch today.  Alone.

 

That shouldn’t be so weird.  Arthur seemed to realize it at the same time, that there would be no way to convince Merlin to take his own bed, and there was no reason to share.  It was weird, but both of their existences felt so fleeting, so ethereal, that Merlin felt the constant need to reassure himself that they were both there.  A man who lived fifteen centuries and one who was brought back from the dead, it seemed understandable to be concerned.

 

“I’ll just, um, go to bed then,” Merlin announced, and then realized that it sounded like he was trying to kick Arthur out of the room.  The awkwardness of sleeping in something that was supposed to be a communal space was starting to make itself known.

 

“Me, too,” was all Arthur answered, though, and he headed into the bedroom. 

 

Like some sort of terrible cliché, Merlin found himself unable to sleep that night.  Arthur had pulled the door over, but not left it completely closed, which Merlin appreciated, and he could just barely hear the ghost of Arthur’s breathing.  It sounded like he was asleep, but what did he know.

 

At some point, Merlin must have fallen asleep, because he certainly woke up, feeling groggy, to the sound of Arthur walking around the kitchen. 

 

“Making breakfast?” Merlin asked, and Arthur jumped.

 

“Yes, of course, because I am so good at it—I was waiting for you to get up.”

 

“To make breakfast?”

 

“To find Gwaine, but breakfast would be nice.”

 

“Right.  I’ll just—“ Merlin suddenly felt awkward that he wasn’t properly dressed, and stood up to change that fact.  When he got back, he tried to make the living room look more presentable, and then made an easy breakfast.  Arthur made a face like he wanted to thank Merlin but knew that it was unnecessary, or maybe Merlin was projecting his own feelings.

 

It almost seemed as though they were trying to put off going out, afraid of what would happen when they found Gwaine, or afraid of how their lives would change after they did, a thought that made Merlin feel incredibly guilty.  Gwaine had been such a loyal friend to him, a thousand times better than he could have ever expected.  What could he possibly be afraid would happen if he found him?

 

“Well,” Arthur said, standing up forcefully, as though he knew it would take at least that to break the current mood, “Time to go.”

 

“Yeah,” Merlin agreed, and got up too.  Then he realized.  “There is going to be no way to make this not look strange to other people.”

 

“Yes.” Arthur laughed.  “I’m quite looking forward to you making a fool of yourself.”

 

“You haven’t seen enough of that?”  
  
“I could never see enough of that.”

 

Merlin glared at him, but he didn’t mean it, and Arthur could clearly tell.

 

They left as soon as they had cleaned up, since they had no reason to stay around any longer.  Merlin had called a cab in advance, just in case.  It seemed unlikely that they would be able to walk wherever they were going, and driving seemed pretty unsafe while also doing a spell.

 

A cab, though, was probably more awkward.  They got in and were, of course, asked where they were going.  Merlin just pointed forward, eyes glowing gold, and said, “I’ll let you know.”

 

True to his word, Arthur was enjoying the entire spectacle, with really no role in this except to occasionally intervene to calm down the driver while Merlin probably seemed to be arbitrarily picking directions.

 

When they finally got to a building that made Merlin order the driver to stop in, admittedly, not the most cordial of tones, he muttered that he knew exactly where they were and could have gotten them there if they’d just asked.

 

“Great,” Merlin said.  “That means you can wait here and then take us back.”  He handed over the fare plus an extra bill, and exited, trusting that it would work out.  Arthur followed, less certain.

 

The apartment building had no extra security, strangely, allowing them to get up a few flights of stairs to the third floor and walk to an apartment on the end of one side of the hallway.

 

“This is definitely it,” Merlin said, as they stood outside, nervous.

 

Arthur looked at him and his indecision for a long moment, and then raised his hand to knock on the door, not breaking eye contact.

 

After a yelled, “Babe, can you get that,” and some shuffling around, the door opened, and lo and behold, Gwaine was behind it, looking exactly the same and completely different.

 

He saw them and his jaw dropped, and the three of them stood in the doorway saying nothing and staring back and forth between themselves until a pretty blonde girl emerged from the bedroom.

 

“Oh,” she said cheerfully, “Are you Gwaine’s friends?  Come in, come in!”

 

Merlin immediately looked at Gwaine, who stepped back to let them in.  Then, the tension immediately dissipated as Gwaine reached forward and pulled Merlin into a hug.

 

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” he asked, voice muffled into Merlin’s neck.  “I don’t think I would have believed it if you had come alone, but the two of you together?  Definitely the Merlin and Arthur I remember.”

 

He pulled back and looked at Arthur, looking like he was considering a hug, but awkwardly put out his hand, and Arthur shook it.  Merlin hoped it was residual respect for his king, rather than any sort of actual awkwardness between them.

 

“It’s really you,” Merlin echoed Gwaine’s words, and he laughed.

 

“Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are,” he said, and then realized that they still had company.

 

“Ah,” he said, “This is Julie.  Jules, these are my very old friends, Arthur and Merlin.”  He seemed amused at his own joke, and Merlin felt himself relax just being in his presence, as though he had been tense without realizing it until this moment.

 

“Nice to meet you,” she said, “Gwaine has told me nothing about you.  Would you like to stay for lunch?”

 

Merlin kind of liked this girl, and kind of was already able to guess why she was so willing to take in men from the street.  Disregarding, of course, that Gwaine probably could have charmed his way into anywhere he wanted.

 

“We, um, have to go back,” Merlin said.  “Or, I guess we could stay,” although the cab driver would leave.

 

“No,” Gwaine said, “I’ll come with you guys.

 

“What?” Julie exclaimed.  “I took you in when you had nothing.”

 

“Hey, I told you, I’m a drifter,” Gwaine said softly.  This was news to Merlin, sort of.  He guessed it was true that Gwaine used to have that kind of lifestyle, but Merlin still remembered him as a knight.

 

Julie appeared to have gone from excited to meeting Gwaine’s friends to really, really angry at them in a short period of time.  Merlin really wanted to do something about it but found himself at a loss.

 

“Julie, I’m so sorry, but we just really need Gwaine’s help with something,” Arthur said, with a winning smile that made even Merlin want to start forgiving people their misdeeds.  “Is that all right with you?  We won’t take him with us if it isn’t.”

 

Merlin knows that’s a lie, and he still is a little bit convinced that they might leave without Gwaine.

 

“Oh,” she said, “Well if you really need him, I guess it can’t be helped.”

 

Arthur stepped closer to her to look directly at her and said, “Thank you for being so understanding.  We really appreciate it.”

 

If Merlin could do some really good magical forgery, Arthur might stand a chance at being a successful politician even today.

 

“I’m very sorry to leave, Jules,” Gwaine added, looking honestly remorseful.  He already had a bag packed, though, which took away a little bit of the credibility of his claim.  He walked over and gave Julie a hug goodbye, to which she responded by kissing him, causing Arthur and Merlin to widen their eyes.  Gwaine walked over to Merlin and swung an arm around his shoulders, leading him out of the building, Arthur following behind them.

 

Merlin noticed that Arthur waved politely behind them, while Gwaine was already completely focused on Merlin, asking what he’d been up to lately.

 

Arthur and Merlin filled Gwaine in on their situation after an awkward cab ride home with the driver who had, against expectations, properly waited for them outside as promised.  Merlin was sure to give him a good amount of extra money as he exited as well, enough that the driver gave Merlin his personal number in case he ever needed another ride.  Of course, Merlin was pretty concerned with privacy, but the thought that someone would have an extra desire to provide him with excellent service tempted him enough that he put the card into his wallet.

 

The story that they got from Gwaine in return for theirs was that he had just woken up on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere, in the dark.  He had understandably panicked at the sight of cars, and luckily managed to figure out quickly what not to do if he wanted to keep his life.  Like Arthur, he had woken up in the clothes he had died in.  He had eventually gotten tired of walking and removed his heavy armor, which Merlin worried could be found and considered some kind of suspicious item.  Then, Jules had driven by and gotten out of her car.  When Gwaine demonstrated no serial killer tendencies and just a strange lack of understanding of current technology, she had concluded him to be Amish.  (Merlin thought privately that Julie may not have been the sharpest tack in the box.)  Gwaine had claimed that was exactly the case, and Julie had insisted on being his tour guide of “the real world,” which, of course, had led to their romance.

 

“And then you showed up!” Gwaine said, still exceedingly pleased to see Merlin.  “I can’t believe you’ve been _alive_ this whole time.”

 

“Believe it,” Arthur said.  “There would be no way for him to be so good at this world already otherwise.”

 

“Mordred sort of knew what he was talking about, too,” Merlin said fairly.

 

“He also killed me,” Arthur dismissed.

 

“You killed him too, though,” Merlin pointed out.

 

“Well, Morgana killed me,” Gwaine complained.

 

“And I killed her,” Merlin answered.

 

“Man, so I’m just the loser who didn’t kill anybody.”

 

“To be fair, so is Morgana.”

 

“Maybe let’s not think of killing people as winning.”

 

“Oh Merlin, fifteen hundred years wasn’t enough to outgrow your naïve optimism.”

 

Merlin rolled his eyes at Arthur.

 

Gwaine just continued staring for a while.

 

“Magic, though,” he added, “Seriously.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Merlin said.  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 

“I understand,” Gwaine replied.  “Although I would think it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t blindly following the rules, even back then.”

 

“I know,” Merlin agreed, honestly feeling guilty right now, sitting by two people whom he really should have told earlier.

 

“He didn’t tell me until I was dying,” Arthur told Gwaine, trying to help.  “I was mad and I tried to leave him at first, but I think . . . I think I might have always known and I just thought he should have told me.”

 

Gwaine was nodding like he agreed with that sentiment, and Merlin felt even worse.  “It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” he said, looking at Arthur.  “I told you already that I didn’t want to put that on you, to make you have to decide between me and what you had been raised to believe.”  Gwaine looked between the two of them, but said nothing.

 

Arthur just looked directly into Merlin’s eyes, said, “I know,” and looked back down.  It was quiet for a few minutes after that.

 

“So,” Gwaine said.  “We ditched out on lunch, and I’m thinking it’s time to eat something.  I’ve got a craving for Thai food.”

 

“How do you guys adjust to the changing food styles so quickly?  Fine, I’ll order Thai food.”

 

When Merlin left, not quite out of earshot, Gwaine turned to Arthur and asked, “Has Merlin been paying for everything for you this whole time?”

 

“Don’t get me started; he insists on serving me and won’t allow me to be grateful or try to do anything.  Says he was born to do it.  And apparently he has a _lot_ of money from all that . . . life.”

 

“Hm.  Well, that sounds like you two, anyway.  Always had so much going on that nobody else was a part of.”

 

“I’m pretty sure Merlin will buy whatever you need, too,” Arthur said, but right while Merlin was coming back.

 

“Of course I will, why, what do you need?  Well, I guess what I really should have gotten was a three bedroom apartment.”

 

“I don’t need anything, Arthur and I were just talking.”

 

“Oh, OK,” Merlin said, feeling awkward.  Everything suddenly got a little overwhelming, and he went to clear his head in the bathroom, but he could still here Gwaine and Arthur.

 

“Whatever you and Merlin used to have, that thing that made me so jealous,” Gwaine was saying, slowly, like he was thinking and weighing his words while he talked.  “You still have it, even now.  Even when Merlin has changed so much and you’ve come back from the dead to an unfamiliar world; it’s still right here.”

 

“Yes,” Arthur agreed, “I know.”

 

\---

 

It didn’t take long after sitting around post-lunch for Gwaine to get bored and ask what their next steps were.

 

Merlin looked at Arthur, waiting to see if Arthur was fine with him telling Gwaine what they were looking for, since it was something so personal to Arthur.  He just nodded, however, like he didn’t know why Merlin was making such a big deal out of this, so Merlin answered.

 

“We’re trying to figure out what brought you back, and how, and why.”

 

“That’s . . . a lot.  What do you have so far?”

 

“We know who was brought back.  And that it was all in a similar area.”

 

“So, nothing?” Gwaine teased lightly.

 

“Exactly,” Arthur said.

 

“Not nothing,” Merlin argued.  “That tells us a lot more than you might think.  There has to be a reason for this time, since so many people were brought back at the same time.  The place, since we’re all here, and the people, since nobody else is here.  Since everyone came here at roughly the same time, it would make sense so far to assume nobody else will be here.  I don’t know what you all have in common, though.”

 

“As pointed out earlier, a lot of us killed each other,” Gwaine said.

 

“I killed a lot of people, though,” Merlin said, and both men stared at him.  “For you,” Merlin added, looking at Arthur.

 

“I still can’t believe that _Merlin_ could kill anyone,” Gwaine said, and Arthur looked like he wanted to agree, though Merlin knew that he had seen it happen.

 

“I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t,” Arthur said.  Then he considered.  “I meant that I wouldn’t have lived back then,” he started to explain, but Gwaine jumped in.

 

“But maybe we wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for Merlin, either?  It makes sense, if he’s as powerful as you guys say.”

 

“He is,” said Arthur.  Merlin gaped.  Although he had told Arthur all the details of his power, all of the people whom he’d defeated and many prophecies about the two of them, he would not have believed that Arthur thought this about him until he heard it out loud.  It felt strange, somehow, to be thought of as strong and competent by Arthur.  He knew, of course, that Arthur had a trust in him that most didn’t in their best friends, much less their servants, but this was something entirely different and strange.  He felt his face heat up, and was pretty sure Gwaine had noticed, even though Arthur was looking around the room after his own declaration.

 

“And didn’t you say that everyone appeared here around the same time you moved here?” Gwaine went on.  “If you were the only one alive the whole time before this, then it seems like you’re at the center of all of this.”

 

“But why here, why now?” Merlin asked, not expecting an answer.  “I’ve moved plenty of times.”

 

Gwaine, for no reason that Merlin could fathom, looked directly at Arthur, and kept his focus there.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Arthur suddenly stood up, surprising Merlin.  “I’m going to go for a walk,” he said.  Merlin made a move to stop him, but Arthur shook his head, and Merlin trusted him at least enough to believe that he could go for a walk and come back, although it still did make him nervous.

 

Merlin wordlessly handed him a key as he was leaving, just in case, and Arthur accepted it just as silently.

 

When he left, Gwaine immediately turned to look at Merlin.  “What are you doing?” he asked, and something about it just made Merlin drop his head into his hands.

 

“I don’t know,” he lamented.  “I’m trying, really trying.  But I walked into my new apartment to find my dead best friend and king alive and sleeping in my bed.  I kept the man who killed him prisoner in my living room, until he escaped with the love of his life and a woman whom _I_ killed, and then found the man she killed living with a pretty blonde woman.”

 

“Not to make light of your problems, but if you simplified everything that happened in Camelot, I think it would be crazier.”

 

Merlin shrugged.  That might have been true, but something about now felt a thousand times more emotional.  He didn’t know how to put it into words, though.

 

“It’s been a while, though,” is what he said instead.

 

“Are you tired?” Gwaine asked, putting it simply.

 

“Surprisingly not.  The time without Arthur was almost like a break,” he joked.  “It’s really not about being tired, though.  I just wish I had more time to be glad that you and Arthur were back instead of being afraid you’re going to leave.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“So you’re going to help me as usual?”

 

“I owe you a lot, Merlin,” he said seriously.

 

Merlin looked back at him and smiled.  “Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome.  So, how are things with you and Arthur now that he’s not the king anymore?”

 

“It’s actually weird.  I don’t know what to call us except friends, and in this time, Arthur actually realizes he needs me, and I hate it.  I really do; I hate it.”

 

“Arthur knew how much he needed you back then, too,” Gwaine said, even though neither of them had any reason to know that.  Even though Merlin had been at least partly joking.

 

“He thanks me too much,” Merlin whispered.  “And he’s afraid I’ll leave, too.”

 

Gwaine laughed.  “You would never,” he said confidently.

 

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Merlin said, as Arthur walked back in.

 

“Wouldn’t what?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.  “It’s very hot out there.”

 

“Magic,” Gwaine said, “Seriously, _magic_.”

 

Merlin suddenly felt he couldn’t take it anymore, walked into his bedroom, and closed the door behind him.  He collapsed onto the bed, and, despite all of his anxiety, fell asleep pretty quickly.

 

He woke up to his door opening, as softly as possible, but at just the wrong time.  He looked up to see Arthur there, hesitating.

 

“I told Gwaine he could take the couch and I’d come in here, but if you want I can go tell him to switch,” Arthur said quietly after he closed the door.  “Or we could both leave you alone.”

 

“No,” Merlin answered, sleepy.  “No, this is fine.”

 

Arthur sat down on the edge of the bed, and Merlin, lying on his back, turned his eyes to look at the back of Arthur’s head.

 

“I’m not afraid you’re going to leave me,” Arthur whispered.  “But,” he said, voice growing in volume, “I’m not going to have you carry me through life like I used to do for you.”

 

Merlin snorted.  “Of course not.”

 

“You’re being unusually dramatic today, Merlin,” Arthur said carefully.

 

“It’s not that unusual.  I used to be able to summon a dragon.  That was pretty dramatic.”

 

Arthur turned to look at him, and Merlin avoided his eyes.

 

“Back then,” Arthur pressed on, “I really thought I was joking about needed a servant in the next life.”

 

“I thought you didn’t want me to be a servant anymore?”

 

“I don’t.  But I really didn’t expect to have a next life, so I can’t say I know what I’m doing anymore.”

 

“Now Arthur, can you really say you knew what you were doing before?”

 

“I can see how the fact my servant was insolent might make you think that, but I’ll have you know I was a great king.”

 

Merlin sat up suddenly, seized by a strange feeling.  “I’m sorry that I let you die,” he said seriously, looking directly at Arthur, who looked immediately taken aback.

 

“Don’t be arrogant; it doesn’t suit you.”

 

“But I knew,” Merlin whispered.

 

“You ‘knew’ because you heard a prophecy?  That doesn’t mean anything.  Why would you believe something so mad?”

 

“Well, it did come true.”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.  Forget about it,” Arthur insisted.

 

Merlin might never.  “I’m going back to sleep.”

 

“It’s not even eight,” Arthur said.  Merlin continued to lie there.  “Merlin,” Arthur said, frustrated.  He got to his knees on the bed, grabbed Merlin’s shoulders, and forced him to sit up and look in his eyes.  “It was not your fault.  I’m glad you didn’t kill someone who was innocent.  As your king, that would have been what I ordered you to do anyway.”

 

Merlin wanted to look away, but he found he couldn’t, so he ran his mouth instead.  “I was never the most obedient of servants, anyway.”

 

“I wouldn’t know what to do with one of those, anyway.”

 

Merlin collapsed forward a little, still held up by Arthur’s grip on his arms.  “I’m glad you’re back.”

 

Arthur sighed, and pushed Merlin back down.  “Go to sleep, Merlin,” he said, getting into the bed properly on the other side.

 

“It’s not even eight,” Merlin joked.  Arthur just got comfortable, ending up close enough that Merlin could feel his warmth, and he closed his eyes.

 

\---

 

Merlin woke up to realize he had slept surprisingly late, and maybe he had been more tired than he had thought.  Arthur was already up, and when Merlin had gotten himself ready and walked into the kitchen, it was to Gwaine teaching Arthur how to make breakfast.

 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Gwaine said without turning around.

 

“Instead of wondering how you know what that means or how to cook, I’m just going to hope there’s enough for me.”

 

“I lived with a young twenty-something year-old woman,” Gwaine answers the question that Merlin implied.  I learned a lot of useful things.”

 

“I can see that,” Merlin said, as a plate of food was set in front of him.

 

“Thank you,” Merlin added, to Arthur, who had handed it to him.  Arthur pretended that he hadn’t even done it, and set about eating his own food instead.

 

“Someone should probably go grocery shopping,” Gwaine said, and Merlin figured he would know.

 

“I’m the only one with money,” Merlin pointed out.

 

“Yes, yes, we’re kept men,” Gwaine said.  Merlin wanted to laugh, but thought that maybe the joke hit too close to home.  It wasn’t like it was Arthur or Gwaine’s fault they couldn’t work in this time; even if Merlin forged documents for them, they would still be years behind on understanding current technologies.

 

Predictably, Arthur did not look like he found that funny.  Maybe he didn’t know what it meant, but he really _had_ been watching a lot of TV lately, so it was anyone’s guess.

 

“I’ll go, then,” Merlin said.  “Any requests?”

 

“If you buy ingredients, I’ll cook plenty,” Gwaine promises.  “Does your building have a gym?”

 

“Um, yes,” Merlin answers, taken aback a little by the non-sequitur.  “Is that a comment on my fitness?”

 

Arthur looked up at that.  “Or mine?”

 

Merlin met his eyes.  “Fine, I’m a terrible person, I gave you a complex about your weight because I was stealing food from you to give it to a girl.  I was young and in love with her, though, if that helps any.”

 

“And you’re not anymore?”

 

“Well I’m certainly not young anymore.  Or in love with Freya.  I don’t even know how that would work.  Not that I want it to.”

 

Gwaine looked confused by the conversation, and Merlin noted that they had done an incomplete job of filling him in.  “This is someone you knew in Camelot?  So she’s not around anymore?”

 

“Yes and no.  I knew her in Camelot, but she’s a bit special.  She’s, um, still in that area.”

 

“That’s not possible.”

 

“She keeps my sword for me,” Arthur added.

 

“That’s not helping at all,” Merlin protested.  “She’s the Lady of the Lake.  She was cursed to turn into a beast, and . . . someone wounded her, but instead of dying, she just lives forever in the lake.  And she kept the magic sword I had forged for Arthur when I needed her to, and also after . . . that last battle.”

 

“Merlin, it gets harder and harder to believe that you find _this_ life weird.”

 

“Gwaine has a point.”

 

“And now they’re teaming up on me,” Merlin said to himself.

 

“Do you think that Freya would have anything to do with this?” Gwaine asked, ignoring Merlin’s external monologue.

 

“That wasn’t really her kind of thing.”

 

“Who’s kind of thing was it?”

 

“Yours, right?” Arthur asked, looking at Merlin.

 

“Well, kind of,” Merlin admitted. 

 

“And you couldn’t have done this accidentally, say, in a fit of grief, around the time when Arthur, Mordred, Morgana, and I died, perhaps?”

 

“I remember that time very well, thank you, and I wasn’t casting spells.”

 

“You can’t cast them by accident?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Merlin answered, but anything seemed possible.  “Besides, if I did, it would have only been on Arthur.”

 

“Thanks,” Gwaine deadpanned.

 

“I just meant—I didn’t even know you had died at that time.”

 

“I know what you meant.”

 

Arthur watched this exchange, frowning slightly.  Merlin announced that he was going to get the groceries, but he lingered a little to eavesdrop, though it made him feel incredibly guilty.

 

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Gwaine was asking quietly.  “Freya?”

 

Merlin assumed that Arthur had done something that indicated the affirmative, because Gwaine went on.

 

“If Merlin were really upset about it, you’d know.  He wouldn’t go right into talking about how much he wanted you to live.”  


Arthur sounded offended when he said, “I know that.”

 

“I suppose you would.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Just that you two know each other quite well.”

 

“We spent a lot of time together.”

 

“You still do.”

 

“Merlin spent a lot of time without you, though.  Do you even know what happened then?”

 

“I do,” Arthur said suspiciously.

 

“Oh.”

 

“You didn’t think I would?”

 

“Honestly, no.  I thought he would keep it secret like the magic.”

 

“Merlin and I didn’t really keep secrets, other than that.”

 

It was at that point that Merlin couldn’t take anymore.  Guilt, from having kept such a secret from Arthur, but also sheer gratefulness that Arthur had forgiven him and trusted him.  More guilt from eavesdropping, and then an immediate desire to run right back in and tell Arthur that Gwaine was right, he wasn’t mad about Freya, he understood.

 

Instead he left.

 

\---

 

The next week passed without much incident, but James kept insisting on having lunch with Merlin.  He felt better knowing that Arthur was with Gwaine and not eating alone, but he still really would rather be there with both of them, discussing plans and theories and their past and future.  James also was very prone to asking overly personal questions about Merlin’s life, still under the impression that Merlin was with Arthur, and thinking that this “knowledge” gave him the right to ask more questions about Merlin’s past, which he was very obviously not willing to talk about.  He stuck to simple things about growing up in England, and being a visiting professor, some stories from his real childhood translated to the current times.

 

It was all quite exhausting, and he felt much better in his overcrowded apartment.  Unfortunately, James was a little too comfortable with the knowledge of where Merlin’s apartment was, and he stopped by another day and found Gwaine there, as well, and was led to some incredibly off-base conclusions, which Arthur truly did his best to get rid of.

 

They were still, to Merlin’s dismay, working under the idea that Merlin had accidentally resurrected several of his friends and enemies.  He could see the logic, because that could definitely be true for Arthur, but the rest seemed impossible.

 

Especially when he saw all of them again.  When Mordred knocked on their front door.

 

The three of them, who had been eating dinner, jumped up as if to defend themselves, but Mordred didn’t seem poised to attack.  He seemed serious about his insistence that he just wanted to talk.

 

“Kara and I worked things out,” he led, after being given a glass of water by Merlin.  Gwaine had pointed out how extremely generous that was of him, and Arthur had laughed about it.

 

“We . . . don’t care,” Gwaine said.  Arthur looked like he mostly agreed, but he was still paying attention.

 

“And?” Merlin prompted.

  
“And then she disappeared.”

 

“You worked things out and then she left you?  Correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t sound very worked out.”

 

“No, she actually vanished.  She was sitting there one second, and completely gone the next.  Right in the middle of our conversation, about you guys, as it happened.”

 

“Why are you telling us this?”

 

“I’m warning you.  This might happen to you as well.”

 

“Not Merlin,” Gwaine said.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because he wasn’t brought back.  Oh.  You didn’t know.”

 

“You were alive this whole time?”

 

“I was waiting for Arthur to come back.”

 

“You were waiting for something like this to happen?”

 

“Well, not exactly like this.  I didn’t expect all of you.”

 

“That’s another thing that I came here to say,” Mordred starts.  “There’s no way to say this well.  But Arthur, I’m sorry that I killed you.”

 

Arthur, surprised, choked a little on his water.  Merlin put his hand to his back only to find out that he didn’t need it, but he left it there anyway.

 

“Could you repeat that?” Arthur asked, after an uncomfortably long silence.

 

“Leaving Camelot, joining Morgana, outing Merlin—as a sorcerer,” he clarified needlessly, “Those were all just such incredibly stupid things to do.  I’m still upset about what you did to Kara, but I know now that she put you in an incredibly difficult position.”

 

“Well, I didn’t want to kill her,” Arthur said.

 

“I know that.  Well, I figured it out after I was here with you for a while.  It was obvious just how much you and Merlin went through, how hard you tried to do everything right, and how much you care about people.  That’s why I went to you in the first place, and you even made me a knight.”

 

“You don’t need my forgiveness,” Arthur said.  “I know why you did this.  It’s always been you doing what you needed to, and I understand.”

 

That was when it all went wrong.

 

Because that was the moment that Merlin understood perfectly what Mordred had meant when he explained Kara’s disappearance.  Since Mordred did the exact same thing.

 

The three men remaining stood up immediately.

 

“What the hell just happened?” Gwaine asked, but Arthur and Merlin were calmly surveying the situation.

 

“He clearly was fading before he disappeared,” Arthur said, and Merlin agreed.

 

“Were you guys watching for that or something?  I didn’t notice it at all.”

 

“Well,” Merlin said, “I figured that since we’re dealing in magic and emotions, that the disappearances might have something to do with those as well.”

 

“So you figured that somehow apologizing to you would make Mordred vanish?”

 

“Basically,” Arthur replied.  “It’s a working theory.”

 

“Would you like to fill me in?”

 

“We just figured that he was . . . done.  With whatever it was that he came back for.”

 

“You figured that out this quickly, both of you?”

 

“It was a guess based on a memory,” Merlin said.  “I didn’t know that Arthur would be able to remember it, though.”

 

Arthur looked at him too.  “I wasn’t quite dead then.  I thought it was a dream, though.”

 

“You often dream of me crying and telling you that you have so much left to do?”

 

“Well, I didn’t, but now it’s been known to happen.”

 

Merlin was once again struck by how little he knew about the way that Arthur’s mind worked.  “I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s really not your fault.  Well, it might be, but I’m not mad about it.”

 

“So what you two are saying is that you know what brought us here, and you’ve accepted it and moved on?  I’m confused.”

 

Merlin could understand that.  “Of course that’s not what I’m saying.  But what are our options?  Do we just make sure that you two go around feeling unfulfilled constantly so that you never die?  Should we track down Morgana to help her complete her life goal, which is probably killing one of us?”

 

“That might not be necessary,” a voice called out, and the three of them, leaning over the table to better argue with each other, looked up simultaneously to see Morgana standing in Merlin’s doorway.

 

Merlin threw himself between Morgana and the other two immediately.

 

“Where’s Mordred?” Morgana yelled immediately.  I can’t believe he went here and left a note to let me know.”

 

“He’s with Kara,” Arthur said.

 

“Kara’s gone.”  
  
“Exactly.”

 

“I don’t believe you.  You killed him.  Again!”

 

“No, just the one time.”

 

“He came here to apologize,” Gwaine said.  “Why would we kill him?”

 

“You’re saying if I was here to apologize for killing you, that you wouldn’t kill me?”

 

“I’m saying it’s possible.”

 

“Well I’m not.  But I might be here to talk?”

 

The weirdness seems par for the course, at this point, and Merlin walks over and puts Mordred’s water into the sink, and gets a new glass for Morgana, somewhat convinced that she’s going to throw it at him.

 

She didn’t.  She sat down at the table right where Mordred had been sitting.  Merlin hoped that wouldn’t become the chair of disappearances.

 

“So,” she said, looking directly at Merlin, “I take it that you understand pretty well why I did everything I did.”

 

Merlin winced.  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.  But I thought I was doing the right thing.”

 

“How can condemning magic be the right thing for a sorcerer?”

 

“I was trying to get people to accept it, too, just . . . not by using it to kill people.”

 

“I never wanted to have to play by the rules of those who sought to destroy me.”

 

“Well, neither of those strategies worked out very well,” Gwaine pointed out.

 

“Maybe magic wasn’t meant to be accepted by everyone,” Merlin said.  “Maybe there has to be something special about you to even understand it.”

 

“I don’t know if I would go that far,” Arthur said, in a way that tempted Merlin to explain that he had been including Arthur in that type of person.

 

“Being special didn’t save us either,” Morgana said, as the disappearing chair worked its magic again.

 

“Crap,” Gwaine said.  “What does that mean for us?”

 

\---

 

Gwaine disappeared the next morning, over breakfast.

 

It seemed like a perfectly normal conversation they were having, and Merlin had thanked him for the food and then went on to thank him for a lot of the things he had done for him, and for being there for him again in this life as well.  And that was it.  He was gone.

 

Merlin thought that it would be a lot harder on Arthur than it was, but somehow he seemed to be taking it just fine.

 

“Merlin, you realize this probably means that Gwaine’s entire reason for being here was you.”

 

He put his head in his hands.  “Yes, I do,” he said, hearing his own muffled voice.  Arthur sat down next to him without saying anything for a few minutes.

 

“It also means,” he went on, “that he was perfectly satisfied.”

 

“That’s a nice way of looking at it,” Merlin said, still talking into his hands.

 

“It’s true.  I could tell.”

 

“Oh,” Merlin said, “You could, could you?  I hadn’t realized you could read minds, but that’s pretty interesting.”

 

“Or maybe I talked to him all week while you were at work.”

 

“I guess that could be it.”

 

“Maybe we all came back for you.”

 

Merlin tried not to think that Arthur was basically admitting that he was there for Merlin.  “Even Kara?”

 

“Hm.  Anything is possible.”

 

It was hard not to smile at that. 

 

Not smiling did become a little easier, however, when someone knocked on the door, and Merlin opened it to reveal one Professor James Smith.

 

“Where are they?” he demanded, coming in uninvited.

 

“Where are who?” Merlin asked, following him inside and trying to impede his progress into the apartment.  There were still three table settings at the table, Gwaine’s food sitting there partially finished.

 

“Morgana and Mordred!” James yelled.

 

“Whoa, wait, how could you possibly know about them?”

 

“I’ve been tracking you for a long time, Merlin,” he said.  “I know what you are.”

 

“What I am?”  Merlin played dumb. 

 

“I know you have magic, and I want to show the world.”

 

“Magic?” Arthur said.  “Are you crazy?  Should I call you a doctor?”  Merlin wondered privately if Arthur even could call a doctor, and realized if he couldn’t, that was a failure on Merlin’s part.

 

“I tracked you down in England,” James went on, “Found your whole work history, everything that was on the books.  Even found pictures.  You looked quite different, then.  I knew there was something up with you, so I bugged your apartment, and I couldn’t believe the things I heard.”

 

Merlin felt incredibly invaded.  So ridiculously many personal thing shad taken place in that apartment from the time that they had been in it.  Even things that Arthur and Mordred and Gwaine wouldn’t have happened to have seen.  And Merlin had thought that he was being so careful.

 

“You can’t tell anybody about that,” Arthur said, this time being the one to get between Merlin and James.  Merlin privately thought that he was still better suited for fighting, but he stayed where he was.

 

“I can and I will.”

 

“Nobody will believe you.”

 

“I have proof.”

 

“Maybe you won’t be around to tell people,” Arthur threatened.

 

“They’ll find it when they search my apartment if you kill me,” James replied.

 

To Arthur and James, it seemed that suddenly, and very unexpectedly, Merlin disappeared.  In actuality, he had summoned all of the magical prowess he possessed and finally gotten the hang of teleportation.  Within a minute, he was back in his own apartment, with every shred of evidence that James had on him.

 

“Oh my god, watching it is one thing, but to see it in person?”  James seemed like all of his dreams had come true.  Merlin was already exhausted from teleporting, so when James came at him to grab him, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid it.  But instead, Arthur tackled James to the ground, causing him to hit his head loudly on the tile floor, and Merlin suddenly knew with absolute clarity that he was dead.

 

He put his hand to his head, about to make a comment about that, when he realized that Arthur was fading.

 

“NO!” he yelled, with every ounce of strength he had, and some that he would have sworn he didn’t, and Arthur’s presence almost seemed to flicker.  It lasted for thirty seconds or so, before he finally settled, back to his normal self.

 

Merlin passed out.

 

\---

 

When he came to, it was to Arthur sitting in a kitchen chair next to his bed, which he was now sprawled across.  He imagined Arthur dragging him into bed, and found himself amused at the thought.

 

“Oh good,” Arthur said, “You’re awake.”

 

“Oh good,” Merlin echoed, “You’re alive.”

 

“Nothing gets past you, Merlin.”

 

“Why are you sitting there?”

 

“Well, someone had to be around to notice if you stopped breathing.”

 

“You probably could have noticed better if you were over here.”  Merlin indicated the other side of the bed.  
  
“I thought that might come off as creepy.”

 

Merlin shrugged.  “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

 

“Good to know.”

 

They were walking the line of something dangerous, and Merlin could feel it in the air, but he didn’t want to stop.

 

“I was a little bit tired,” Merlin explained.  “It may have been teleporting, or teleporting again, or anchoring you to the world when the previous spell I accidentally cast on you and everyone else who died unsatisfied in the battle fifteen hundred years ago wore off.”

 

“No, you’re probably just being dramatic as usual.”  Arthur stood, pushing the chair aside, and walked around to the other side of the bed, climbing in.

 

“Then what’s your excuse?” Merlin asked, as Arthur made himself comfortable enough to fall asleep.

 

“Obviously, your histrionics are wearing me out.”

 

“Oh, yes.  Obviously.”  Merlin rolled over.  Arthur was facing away from him, but Merlin rested his forehead at the base of his neck, and Arthur adjusted accordingly.

 

Still worn out, Merlin fell asleep easily.

 

He woke up to feel his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, still lying turned to Arthur, who had shifted to lie on his back.  Feeling the same line of danger as earlier, that sense that had been there, in a different incarnation fifteen hundred years ago, the feeling that had grown and changed and was easier and endlessly more difficult to think about now than it was in the past.  The situations they found themselves in were no less intense and mind-blowing, but they were now less pressing.  It seemed like everything was finally settled, and they were going to have to deal with just themselves, and that was frightening.

 

With all that in his head, Merlin just moved his hand to rest on Arthur’s sleep-slow beating heart, and closed his eyes and fell back asleep.

 

He woke up again with his face right by Arthur’s; they’d apparently both moved to face each other in the night.  Possibly what woke him up woke Arthur, too, as they were both stirring at the same time.

 

Merlin brought their foreheads together gently, and Arthur reached his hand out to rest it on the side of Merlin’s face.  He was suddenly reminded of the time that Arthur had just gotten there and was gazing out the window, when he turned and told Merlin he looked exactly the same, and made an aborted hand gesture.  Had Arthur been waiting a long time just to do this?  The thought seemed preposterous. 

 

Not nearly as preposterous as what happened next, the gentle meeting of their lips before Merlin was even aware that it was going to happen.  He hadn’t even noticed either of them moving.

 

Shocked, Merlin pulled away, but Arthur’s hand was still on his face.  His eyes were open like he was surprised, too.  Merlin wanted to do something to diffuse the tension, but nothing came to mind.

 

If something had come to mind, though, it probably wouldn’t have been what Arthur did, which was to roll them both over so he was on top of Merlin, holding his wrists above his head.

 

Merlin looked up at Arthur.  Interestingly, this was not the first time that he’d been in this situation, since they used to be so prone to physical fights.  The view was familiar, but the feelings were definitely not.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Figure it out, Merlin,” Arthur said, then he hesitated.  “If you don’t want this . . .”

 

Merlin leaned up to kiss him again.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”  He was already breathing heavily, despite having just woken up, despite the fact that they had barely done anything.  As much as he wanted to blame it on the exhaustion, how spent he was from all the magic, that wasn’t it.  He was just overwhelmed, pure and simple.  Arthur could obviously tell; there was no way he couldn’t tell.

 

It was a credit to their trust, their previously hashed and rehashed conversations, that Arthur didn’t ask Merlin if he felt a sense of obligation, or guilt.  It didn’t even occur to Merlin to ask the same of Arthur. 

 

After a few more seconds with nothing but the sound of Merlin’s embarrassingly loud breathing in the room, Arthur pulled himself back.  “Maybe we should stop,” he suggested.

 

“I don’t want to,” Merlin answered honestly.

 

“Me either,” Arthur answered.  “That’s not what I said.”

 

Considering the day, the week, the life they’d had, it seemed like maybe it was wise for them to take a step back and think about this, but that was pretty hard to agree to in this situation.

 

“Fine,” Merlin agreed.  “In a minute.”

 

\---

 

Eventually, possibly five minutes later, Merlin and Arthur were sitting around eating random bites from the leftover takeout in the fridge.  They were sitting at opposite ends of the table, looking at each other, and it could have been awkward, but it was somehow just the right amount of heated.

 

Arthur had put on that damned red shirt.

 

Merlin was still somewhat convinced the kiss hadn’t happened.  That he wasn’t a person who had kissed Arthur Pendragon, been kissed by him.  It was too crazy to be fathomed.

 

It had happened.

 

Maybe it was hard to tell, though, since they were still acting pretty much the same way that they always had.  Somehow this hadn’t changed a thing between them; the Arthur and Merlin dynamic was still intact, exactly the same.

 

He had honestly convinced himself it never happened, when Arthur brought his fingers across his mouth, looking directly at Merlin when he did it, then looking away and breaking the moment.

 

“You know,” Merlin said.  “When I found you in my bed when I got here, I unintentionally de-aged myself back to this age.”

 

“Are you trying to tell me I make you feel young?”  To anyone else, Arthur might have sounded condescending, but Merlin recognized the humor in his voice.

 

So he laughed.  “I’m trying to tell you that I planned to see if I could still age myself then, but I forgot until this morning.”

 

“And now I make you feel old.”

 

“If you’ll notice, it didn’t work.”

 

“Wait, seriously?  Does that mean—“

 

“I think so.”

 

“So you’re normal now?  Was it the—was it me, or was it yesterday?”

 

“I don’t know,” Merlin answered honestly.  “I can still do magic.”  Merlin demonstrated this by creating a fiery shape in the air, tracing mindlessly.  Arthur seemed a little transfixed, and Merlin stopped, feeling awkward.

 

“What else can you do?” Arthur asked.

  
“Name it,” Merlin replied, feeling simultaneously too open and not open enough.

 

“I’m going to need a job or something real to do,” Arthur started.

 

“Easy,” Merlin said.  “What do you want to do?”

 

“I don’t know yet.”

 

“Well, when you figure it out.  Anything else?”

 

Arthur took too long to answer, and Merlin glanced at him and his shirt came unbuttoned.  He looked down, affronted.  “You can do anything, and that’s what you choose?”

 

“That’s a really good color on you,” he said sincerely.

 

“Then why take it off?” he asked, standing up and shrugging it off completely.  


“At this point, I think you’re the one taking it off.”

 

Arthur advanced on Merlin, shirtless, until he finally reached him, at which point he draped the shirt over Merlin’s shoulders.  “It’s not the worst color in the world on you, either.”  He smoothed it down over Merlin’s chest, and Merlin shivered.

 

They stood there for a while, the air thick with questions.  One time could be an accident, a fluke, but twice was intentional; twice was a pattern.  They still leaned in.

 

“Do you still think we shouldn’t?” Merlin asked.  He was honestly a little worried that Arthur would say yes, would stop it there.  Even though that might be safer.  But playing it safe had never been their kind of thing, anyway.

 

“I never really thought that,” Arthur answered, allowing his hands to roam until they were at Merlin’s neck and he could pull him in to kiss him, gently at first.

 

Merlin felt like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, a feeling he was pretty much used to, although usually in a much different context.  Finally they rested on Arthur’s hips, but even just having his hands there was a turn-on, not to mention how it encouraged Arthur to kiss more deeply and open his mouth.

 

He was not completely used to this kind of kissing.  He hadn’t been this close to someone since Camelot, but he didn’t know how to tell Arthur that.  Arthur may have been in a similar situation, but he had a much better excuse.

 

Arthur pulled back, this time, and it was somewhat gratifying to Merlin to see that Arthur looked as affected by this as he felt. 

 

“Too much?” Merlin asked, even though he knew that was exactly the case.

 

“It’s been too long, and this might be too weird.”

 

“Oh,” Merlin said.  “Of course.”

 

“Because I’ve been dead for fifteen hundred years and you’ve been alive, and our friends came back and left, and we’re alone in a different way than we ever have been,” Arthur said.  “What do you think I meant?”

 

“That, obviously.”

 

“We should probably give it at least a day.”

 

“A day?”  Merlin laughed.  “A day to get over more than a millennium of ridiculousness?  That sounds about right.”

 

“Great,” Arthur said.  He pushed Merlin down onto the couch, grabbed the remote, and sat on the other side, sticking his feet into Merlin’s lap.  “What kind of servant would you be if you didn’t massage my feet?”

 

Merlin pushed his feet out of his lap, and Arthur brought his feet back, not taking his eyes off the TV, and Merlin left them there, eventually bringing his hands there and sort of not-really rubbing them anyway.  Sometime throughout the show, they ended up with their positions switched, and in several other arrangements as well, unable to keep still.

 

He should have suggested a walk, or something, but it seemed like other people might ruin whatever was hanging over them, reminding them of the real world.  Then Merlin realized that they had been through way worse and still ended up here, so they walked back to the park.  Merlin emailed to cancel his lectures, and they picked up some easy to eat food from a café before sitting on the bench they had sat on when Mordred had been in town.

 

One of Merlin’s students who usually sat in the front row of the class he should be teaching walked by, then stopped and turned back.

 

“Professor?  You’re looking awfully well for someone too sick to lecture.”

 

“Looks can be deceiving,” Merlin replied, like only someone a little too unconcerned with their job can.

 

“I can see what was so important,” the student said sarcastically.

 

“Me too,” Merlin said, looking directly at Arthur, who currently was pretending to the scene entirely.  Merlin could tell he was paying attention, though.

 

“Whoa, was Professor Smith telling the truth about you?”

 

That was incredibly inappropriate, James gossiping about Merlin’s hypothetical personal life with their mutual students, but, then again, trying to expose Merlin’s magic and threatening lives wasn’t exactly kosher either.  Neither was being killed by the resurrected king of Camelot, but, to be fair, that probably hadn’t been James’s plan.

 

Merlin just turned to Arthur, who finally was acting like he was paying attention.  Too much, maybe, when he turned Merlin to face him, asking with his eyes if it was all right.  Merlin rolled his eyes, knowing Arthur would know exactly what he meant, and met him halfway.

**Author's Note:**

> The only things I can think to warn for are character re-deaths of some characters who have died in the series and were brought back, and the possible maturity difference between a character who has been alive fifteen hundred more years than another, with whom he gets together in the end. I do try to imply that Merlin has not been doing any “real” living while Arthur-less.
> 
> I wrote this because I got really obsessed with reincarnation, although I’m not usually much for that kind of thing. I started this in January and forced myself to write every day, even if it was just a really tiny bit.
> 
> Please comment with literally anything that you feel like commenting because of this story. Constructive criticism, errors you’ve noticed, things you liked or disliked and why, seriously. I will not be offended.
> 
> Find me on tumblr as [loveandallthat](http://loveandallthat.tumblr.com/)


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